Innovation Toronto
Innovation Toronto
This unassuming material is capable of capturing or releasing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in response to moisture swings.
Pulling carbon dioxide out of the air using moisture
A more efficient way to capture fresh water from the air
Bringing transformative potential to agriculture with a natural technology for ‘dimming’ genes
Staving off coral reef collapse via a new technique
Producing energy from evaporating tap or seawater with new nanoscale devices
Setting the stage for regenerative therapy by turning skin cells into limb cells

Sticking Power of Plant Polyphenols Used in New Coatings

August 23, 2013
300px-Korea-Boseong-Green.tea-09
500 year old green tea fields, Boseong, Jeollanam-do, South Korea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Compounds found in red wine, green tea stick to anything, retain useful properties

A simple kitchen sink experiment helped Northwestern University researchers discover that green tea leaves not only can be used to steep a good cup of tea, but they make an excellent antibacterial coating, too.

And so can red wine, dark chocolate and cacao beans, they found. It’s the powerful and healthful polyphenols at work in a new way. (Polyphenols are naturally occurring molecules found in plants whose functions include structural support and defense against bacteria and oxidative damage.)

Polyphenols are sticky, and the researchers exploited this useful property, while also retaining some of the compounds’ well-known biological properties. They made new multifunctional coatings based on tannic acid and pyrogallol — inexpensive compounds resembling the more complex polyphenols found in tea, wine and chocolate.

Simply dissolving polyphenol powder in water with the proper dash of salt quickly produces colorless coatings that have antioxidant properties, are non-toxic and can kill bacteria on contact.

The coatings — which can stick to virtually anything, including Teflon — could be used on a wide range of consumer, industrial and medical products, from catheters and orthopedic implants to membranes for water purification and materials used in food processing, packaging and preparation.

The study is published today (Aug. 22) in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

“We discovered a way to apply coatings onto a variety of surfaces that takes advantage of the sticky properties of the polyphenol compounds,” said Phillip B. Messersmith, who led the research. “It’s a very simple dip-coating process, and the antibacterial and antioxidant properties are preserved in the coating.”

One could take a stainless-steel hip implant, he said, apply the process to it, and the coating that emerges spontaneously and with no other modifications will kill bacteria and quench reactive oxygen species, such as free radicals.

Messersmith is the Erastus O. Haven Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Messersmith’s team tested all kinds of materials — medically relevant polymers, engineering polymers, metals, inorganic substrates and ceramics — and a coating stuck to each one. The researchers also demonstrated they can easily modify the coatings to give them additional functions, such as an antifouling property to prevent cells from building up on a surface, such as a pacemaker.

See Also
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech

“What’s interesting is that the raw materials we regularly encounter in our diets can benefit us in a way we had never envisioned — as coatings on medical devices,” said Tadas S. Sileika, a graduate student in Messersmith’s lab and first author of the paper.

“The coatings innately have properties that are very beneficial to saving lives and keeping people healthy. Without any further modification, they can help prolong the life of a medical device, reduce inflammation in a patient and prevent bacterial infections,” he said.

Read more . . .

 

 

The Latest Bing News on:
New Coatings
The Latest Google Headlines on:
New Coatings

[google_news title=”” keyword=”New Coatings” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]

The Latest Bing News on:
New Coatings
The Latest Google Headlines on:
New Coatings

[google_news title=”” keyword=”New Coatings” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]

Tags
What's Your Reaction?
Don't Like it!
0
I Like it!
0
View Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Scroll To Top