Coatings
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Plastic wraps and food containers generate huge amounts of waste. Now researchers at Harvard and Rutgers have developed a new plant-based, antimicrobial coating that can be sprayed onto food to keep it fresh, and easily washed off before consumption.
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Industrial piping has a hard life, as it's constantly exposed to liquids that can damage its inner surface over time. A new polymer coating could help protect such pipes, while removing toxic metals from the liquids as it does so.
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Red wine and chocolate are notorious for staining clothes, thanks to the tannic acid that they contain. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have now used that acid in a textile coating which keeps clothes from stinking, and that doesn't wash out.
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Researchers at Oxford have developed a new smart window coating that can be tuned on the fly to emit or reflect heat from the Sun in different amounts, reducing the energy costs of heating and cooling by up to a third.
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Berkeley Lab engineers have developed a roof coating that can keep a building warmer or cooler, depending on the weather. When it’s warm out the material will reflect sunlight and heat, but it switches itself off in winter, reducing energy use.
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While brain-implanted electrodes do show promise for applications such as restoring capabilities to the disabled, they tend to lose their functionality over time. A new coating, however, could allow them to work much longer once implanted.
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Waterproof coatings do make products such as outerwear much more useful, but they also drive up the price. A new coating, though, is claimed to be 90 percent cheaper to produce, while still being highly effective and more eco-friendly.
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New weapons against so-called “superbugs” are desperately needed. A new black phosphorus coating quickly kills bacteria and fungi, then dissolves within 24 hours – and best of all, bacteria can’t evolve resistance against this mode of attack.
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Usually optical coatings either reflect or transmit a given color of light, but now researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a new class of optical coating that can both transmit and reflect the same wavelengths at the same time.
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While reverse osmosis is a relatively energy-efficient form of seawater desalination, it is nonetheless made less efficient by a problem known as biofouling. A new membrane coating, however, could address biofouling like never before.
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When a patient receives a titanium artificial hip, there's always the risk of an infection developing at the interface between the metal and the bone. A new implant-coating process, however, is intended to greatly reduce that risk.
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Adding “two-faced” nanoparticles could improve paints and coatings. With one face that attracts water and another that repels it, the particles arranged themselves in a flat layer on a painted surface and could make for paint with unusual properties.
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