Development of Low Fouling/High Fouling-release and Self-polishing Nonfouling Marine Coatings
Abstract
As seen in Scheme 1, on the coating surface, the hydrophilic nonfouling chainforming the core of a nanoparticle, stretches out into seawater, preventing the settlement offoulants on the coating surface. These PCBMA brush clusters on the coating surface resultin the formation of a nanopatterned surface texture. Thus, varied zwitter/PDMS coatingsurface topographies depending on the composition, size and shape of added nanoparticleswill affect both "low-fouling" and "fouling-release" properties. The size and shape of thenanoparticles can be precisely controlled via adjusting PDMS-PCBMA block length andsolvent. Extensive fundamental studies of these parameters were already conducted.Previous field test results showed that appropriate hydrophilic block length and zwittercontent in coatings can lead to low initial fouling and high fouling-release properties. In thisproject, marine coatings, which integrate both nonfouling and fouling-release properties intoone system by uniformly mixing zwitterionic polymer nanopatricles into silicone matrix,will further developed and tested. The objective of this project is to develop a more robustmarine coating formulation possessing all the nonfouling and fouling-release properties andsuitable for large-scale production. There are three specific tasks below.1) To synthesize zwitterionic block copolymers including PDMS-PCBMA and PDMSPEGMA-PCBMA via ATRP and gradually move into a method allowing for the largescaleproduction of copolymers.2) To optimize a coating formulation by simplifying nanoparticle formation process. This isthe most important part of this project.3) To evaluate these coatings in field and boat tests.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 23, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141612987
Entities
People
- Xuewei Xu
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy