TY - JOUR
T1 - Viscoelastic solid-repellent coatings for extreme water saving and global sanitation
AU - Wang, Jing
AU - Wang, Lin
AU - Sun, Nan
AU - Tierney, Ross
AU - Li, Hui
AU - Corsetti, Margo
AU - Williams, Leon
AU - Wong, Pak Kin
AU - Wong, Tak Sing
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank V. Bojan and J. Shallenberger at the Materials Research Institute of The Pennsylvania State University for help with the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements and data processing, L. Andersson for help with the longevity test, B. Boschitsch Stogin for help with manuscript preparation, and A. Turrigiano for discussion. We thank T. Laremore (director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences Proteomics and Mass Spectrometry Core Facility) for assistance with the MALDI Biotyper microorganism identification. We thank J. C. Liao from Stanford University for providing the urine sample. We acknowledge funding support from the National Science Foundation (CAREER Award number 1351462; I-Corps numbers 1757165 and 1735627), Wormley Family Early Career Professorship and Humanitarian Materials Initiative Award, sponsored by Covestro and the Materials Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. Part of the work was conducted at the Penn State node of the National Science Foundation-funded National Nanotechnology of Infrastructure Network.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Water scarcity threatens over half of the world’s population, yet over 141 billion litres of fresh water are used globally each day for toilet flushing. This is nearly six times the daily water consumption of the population in Africa. The toilet water footprint is so large primarily because large volumes of water are necessary for the removal of human faeces; human faeces is viscoelastic and sticky in nature, causing it to adhere to conventional surfaces. Here, we designed and fabricated the liquid-entrenched smooth surface (LESS)—a sprayable non-fouling coating that can reduce cleaning water consumption by ~90% compared with untreated surfaces due to its extreme repellency towards liquids, bacteria and viscoelastic solids. Importantly, LESS-coated surfaces can repel viscoelastic solids with dynamic viscosities spanning over nine orders of magnitude (that is, three orders of magnitude higher than has previously been reported for other repellent materials). With an estimated 1 billion or more toilets and urinals worldwide, incorporating LESS coating into sanitation systems will have significant implications for global sanitation and large-scale wastewater reduction for sustainable water management.
AB - Water scarcity threatens over half of the world’s population, yet over 141 billion litres of fresh water are used globally each day for toilet flushing. This is nearly six times the daily water consumption of the population in Africa. The toilet water footprint is so large primarily because large volumes of water are necessary for the removal of human faeces; human faeces is viscoelastic and sticky in nature, causing it to adhere to conventional surfaces. Here, we designed and fabricated the liquid-entrenched smooth surface (LESS)—a sprayable non-fouling coating that can reduce cleaning water consumption by ~90% compared with untreated surfaces due to its extreme repellency towards liquids, bacteria and viscoelastic solids. Importantly, LESS-coated surfaces can repel viscoelastic solids with dynamic viscosities spanning over nine orders of magnitude (that is, three orders of magnitude higher than has previously been reported for other repellent materials). With an estimated 1 billion or more toilets and urinals worldwide, incorporating LESS coating into sanitation systems will have significant implications for global sanitation and large-scale wastewater reduction for sustainable water management.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41893-019-0421-0
DO - 10.1038/s41893-019-0421-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85075435116
SN - 2398-9629
VL - 2
SP - 1097
EP - 1105
JO - Nature Sustainability
JF - Nature Sustainability
IS - 12
ER -