Duke University researchers create polymer coating to keep bacteria, barnacles at bay

Leaving biofouling materials stuck to ships can also have another environmental impact. For ships sailing worldwide, there is a risk invasive species will be transferred from their native habitat to ones where they can be damaging. For example, nutrient-hoarding zebra mussels from Russia were brought via ship hull to the Great Lakes in the late 1990s. Within 10 years, these invaders had wreaked havoc on the region’s fishing industry and levied more than $3 billion in damages.

Ridding ships of biofouling materials is also of military import, López said. The more barnacles and bacteria a ship carries, the noisier the vessel is, making it easier to detect.

How it works

Traditionally, the shipping industry used less-than-optimal means to protect vessels. For more than 40 years, global maritime companies coated their roughly 30,000 ships with paint containing tributyltin, an inexpensive, effective – and poisonous – barnacle- and algae-killer. An international treaty banned its use in 2007.

Another protection method has been a polymer coating that reduces biofouling substances’ ability to adhere to the boat. It’s a temporary fix, though, because bacteria and barnacles eventually adapt to the polymer and attach themselves anyway, Zhao said.

This new solution, however, starts with an environmentally safe silicon rubber polymer coating on the ship’s hull. Running voltage through the flat polymer turns it into a capacitor – a passive structure that stores energy – and generates an electric field, he said. This cleaning strategy then relies on electrostriction, a property of electrical nonconductors that allows them to change shape when exposed to electricity, to slough away the offending substances.

“There are patterned channels – air channels – beneath the polymer, and if you blow air into the channels, it will increase the hydrostatic pressure and buckle up the polymer surface,” Zhao said. “We basically form a wrinkle on the surface of the polymer, and the biofouling substances simply detach.”

Although this strategy must be tested on the large scale, it does offer two advantages other cleaning solutions have lacked, Zhao said. The silicon rubber polymer could potentially last for years, and this method eliminates the need to dry dock a ship for cleaning. An electric current can be sent to the polymer anytime, anywhere, and the ship will slough off biofouling material.