Inspired by Biology<br>The European Coatings Conference "Smart Coatings III"
The conference auditorium was filled with a mixture of delegates from a wide range of industries, as well as several international universities. Presented by representatives from university research departments, start-up and ‘established' companies, the papers covered a wide range of new products and ideas on how to impart novel functions to paints and surface coatings.
Several papers dealt with specific developments in such systems. So it was that Prof. Lei Jiang (Chinese Academy of the Sciences) reported on surfaces that are coated with poly-N-isopropyl acrylamide (PNIPAAm) and laser structured, and that undergo reversible thermal switching from super-hydrophilic at 25 °C to super-hydrophobic at 40 °C. Dr. Stephen Bitler (Landec Corp.), presented coatings that, again controlled by the temperature, change their permeability to, e.g., CO2, and are already being used for foodstuffs packaging in the United States.