Ultra-Repellent Slippery Surfaces

Next BIU Engineering Colloquium,
Dr. Alexander B. Tesler, Tuesday, 13.2.24 @13:00

Via Zoom: https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/65312009878?pwd=N0xINnBvV1ByNXp4aXZ5VWdGcW9JZz09
Meeting ID: 653 1200 9878
Passcode: 962087

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We are delighted to host

 Dr. Alexander B. Tesler

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Dr. Tesler will give a talk on the subject:

Ultra-Repellent Slippery Surfaces

Abstract: Wetting describes the ability of liquids to maintain contact with a solid surface, a phenomenon that is ubiquitous in nature¹. However, in engineering and medical applications, contact of solid surfaces with aqueous media leads to undesirable phenomena such as corrosion, chemo- and biofouling, which have extremely negative economic, health and environmental impacts. Therefore, control of wetting on solid surfaces is key to mitigating its detrimental effects. The latter can be achieved by minimizing the contact of the solid substrate with aqueous media, so-called superhydrophobic surfaces (SHS). Although SHS have been studied for decades to overcome wetting challenges², they are still rarely used in engineering applications.

When immersed underwater, a special type of SHS can trap air on its surface, a so-called plastron, also known as an aerophilic surface. To date, plastrons have been reported to be impractical for underwater engineering applications due to their short lifetime. Here, I will describe aerophilic surfaces made of titanium alloy (Ti) with an extended lifetime of plastron conserved for months underwater³. The extended methodology was developed to unambiguously describe the wetting regime on such aerophilic surfaces since conventional goniometric measurements are simply impractical. My aerophilic surfaces drastically reduce the adhesion of blood, and when immersed in aqueous media, prevent the adhesion of bacteria, and marine organisms such as barnacles, and mussels. Applying thermodynamic stability theories, we describe a generic strategy to achieve long-term stability of plastron on aerophilic surfaces for demanding and hitherto unattainable applications.

References:

(1) Quéré, D. Wetting and Roughness. Annual Review of Materials Research 2008, 38 (1), 71-99.

(2) Cassie, A. B. D.; Baxter, S. Wettability of porous surfaces. Transactions of the Faraday Society 1944, 40, 546-551.

(3) Tesler, A.B.;* Kolle, S.; Prado, L.H.; Thievessen, I.; Böhringer, D.; Backholm, M.; Karunakaran, B.; Nurmi, H.A.; Latikka, M.; Fischer, L.; Stafslien, S.; Cenev, Z.M.; Timonen, J.V.I.; Bruns, M.; Mazare, A.; Lohbauer, U.; Virtanen, S.; Fabry, B.; Schmuki, P.; Ras, R.H.A.; Aizenberg, J.; Goldmann, W.H. Long-Lasting Aerophilic Metallic Surfaces Underwater. Nature Materials 2023, Published online: 18 September 2023. *Corresponding author

Short bio: Dr. Alexander Tesler is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow / Senior Scientist at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Israel Rubinstein. After graduation, he spent several years at Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University studying mechanically durable omniphobic slippery surfaces. His scientific interests are spread from omniphobic surfaces, self-assembly monolayers, plasmonics, and membrane technology to electrochemical methods to create smart highly-ordered self-organized nanomaterials.