00:00 Short
sequence showing man reading newspaper. Spills wine
c.u.
wine stain
Sequence
– researcher demonstrating wine spill on coated textile
c.u.
wine washing off surface
c.u.
samples being placed on glass slides
Guide Voice: A familiar scene; you’re
relaxing with a glass of wine and you spill some. If it’s red
wine on a light coloured shirt then the garment’s probably
ruined – but technology being developed at the University of
Durham, in the UK, means that accidents like this need never be a
problem again.
Professor Jas Pal Badya and his research team are developing
super repellent techniques, an area of plasma chemistry, that are
opening up a wide range of uses, from simple liquid proof textiles
through to new ways of screening genetic material for disease.
00:34 SOT: Professor Jas Pal Badya
– “This model is a demonstration of the
chemistry which is used in the processes that we’re
developing at the University. What it comprises of, basically is
that we have a chamber, and in that chamber we have a gas, and in
order to change that gas into a coating we need to excite that gas,
and the way that we do this is by introducing some electricity into
the gas. In the centre we have the source of the electricity and
this is basically exciting the gas, and that’s what the
streamers here correspond to. And if I put my finger on it for
instance you can see the um, the glow is localized onto my finger
because the electricity is coming towards my finger and being
earthed through my body. So rather than having my finger there on
the outside, if on the inside we had a textile you could actually
coat the textile”.
01:34 Researcher
in Lab
Gas
pulsating in vacuum chamber
Researcher
checking scope
Droplet
being placed under microscope
Researcher
viewing droplet on screen
c.u.
droplet shown on screen
c.u
hands adjusting microscope
c.u.
droplet shown on screen
Wide
– researcher placing water on treated glass
c.u.
water droplets running on glass
Wide
– researcher at computer
c.u.
computer screen
Wine
rinsing off textile
Glass
sample slides being prepared
Guide Voice: Developed for the Ministry of
Defence, the original coatings were designed to protect soldiers
from weapons such as Mustard Gas which is, actually, droplets of
liquid.
By controlling the behaviour of a liquid, ensuring that
individual droplets remain spherical when coming into contact with
a treated surface, rather than soaking in and spreading, the
process is able to direct a liquid into precise, selected areas,
even on a very small scale. Super repellent surfaces are of major
importance in many areas, including aerospace and biomedical
protection and the value of their application in domestic settings
are immediately obvious.
The University of Durham’s technology is particularly
notable for its sheer simplicity, the absence of solvents in the
process, and its ability to coat complex shaped objects.
02:21 SOT: Professor Jas
Pal Badya – “In the past what’s
happened is that the coatings have been quite thick, I mean
we’re quite familiar with for instance paints and when you
apply paint there’s a solvent and the coatings are actually
very very thick, but it’s only just the surface of the
coating which gives you the benefit that you’re after. So,
the challenge has always been how you can start to put down very
thin coatings, sort of nanometre scale, nanotechnology level. How
you can put those coatings down, and be able to apply them in a
very uniform way. So that was the real challenge, and by not using
solvents and by using very small amounts of chemicals, so
there’s very little waste, we can achieve those
goals”.
03:07 End
