Combinatorial materials research applied to the development of new surface coatings

A combinatorial workflow has been produced for the development of novel, environmental-friendly marine coatings. A particularly challenging aspect of the workflow development was the selection and development of high-throughput screening methods that allow for some degree of prediction of coating performance in the aquatic environment of interest. The high-throughput screening methods currently in place include measurements of surface energy, viscoelastic properties, pseudobarnacle adhesion, and a suite of biological assays based on various marine organisms. An experiment involving a series of fouling-release coatings was used to correlate high-throughput screening data to data obtained from ocean site immersion testing. The results of the experiment showed that both bacterial biofilm surface coverage and storage modulus at 30 °C showed a good correlation with barnacle adhesion strength and a fair correlation with fouling rating, but surface energy and pseudobarnacle adhesion did not correlate with the results from ocean site testing.