LiquiGlide Awarded Patents for Permanently Slippery Coating Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA – LiquiGlide Inc. announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded the company three new patents. One of the patents (No. 9,371,173) protects the company’s broad use of liquid-impregnated surfaces for packaging and processing as well as large containers such as manufacturing tanks – a key new area of focus for the company. The recently issued patents expand the company’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio to include 13 total globally issued patents, with more than 150 applications pending around the world.
“Most ‘real’ liquids around us are non-Newtonian and behave as sticky pastes. The new patent by LiquidGlide shows how non-Newtonian matter can be rendered mobile on liquid-impregnated textured materials,” said David Quéré, an expert on interface science and professor at Ecole Polytechnique and ESPCI, France. “This patent sets the stage for major applications, in particular, because the kind of container that can be treated has no limitation in terms of size, material and shape. It is now possible to transform the generally solid-like behavior of these special liquids into a fluid behavior, that is, from sticky to slippery – a major breakthrough in industrial and daily life applications.”