AMBIO
Advanced Nanostructured Surfaces
for the Control of Biofouling
Marine biofouling is caused by the adhesion of organisms living in seawater such as bacteria, barnacles and algae to a surface. It generates large economic costs due to increase in mass of ships and leisure boats and creating maneuvering difficulties.
In order to prevent biological fouling and to control its negative results, joint studies were made in the 6th Framework of the European Union-AMBIO Project between 2005-2010 years. AMBIO was a big integrated project and the chosen letters of the “Advanced Nanostructured Surfaces for the Control of Biofouling” were used to form its synonym. The aim of the project is to develop micro/nano structured surfaces that prevent biofouling of the marine organisms under water. It also investigates how the marine organisms adhere to the surfaces by testing surfaces having different roughness and chemical heterogeneities. AMBIO project is an interdisciplinary project and covers industrial and research companies and universities which produced nano/micro materials by joining the efforts of groups experienced in chemistry, physics, chemical engineering and biology fields. At the end, site trials were made by the industrial end-user partners. The total budget of the five year project was 17.9 million Euros and the part of the 11.9 million Euro of the budget was directly financed by the European Commission. In this project, Turkey is represented by Professor H. Yıldırım Erbil’s group in Gebze Institute of Technology (GYTE), Chemical Engineering Department. They developed micro-patterned olefin copolymer blends and fluoroacrylate containing polymer surface coatings, and due to their achievements GYTE group passed to the industrial development stage in the last two years of the project. Finally, AMBIO project reached most of its targets and was completed successfully.
Title of the project: Advanced Nanostructured Surfaces for the Control of Biofouling(AMBIO)
Project Number: NMP4-CT-2005-011827
Duration of the Project: 5 years (2005- 2010)
Published articles from this project: In this project, 70 papers were published, 5 patent application have been submitted and 531 presentation have been made from 31 partners.
Published articles in this project by GYTE:
- 1. I. O. Ucar, C. E. Cansoy, H. Y. Erbil, M. E. Pettitt, M. E. Callow, J. A. Callow "Effect of Contact Angle Hysteresis on the Removal of the Sporelings of the Green Alga Ulva from the Fouling-Release Coatings Synthesized from Polyolefin Polymers" Biointerphases, 2010, 5 (3), 75-84.
- 2. H. Yıldırım Erbil, “Bacterial Adhesion on Low Energy Solid Surfaces: A Surface Thermodynamics Approach” Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology, 2011, 25 (17), 2137-2153.
- 3. I. O. Ucar, M. D. Doganci, C. E. Cansoy, H. Y. Erbil, I. Avramova, S. Suzer "Combined XPS and Contact Angle Studies of Ethylene Vinyl Acetate and Polyvinyl Acetate Blends" Applied Surface Science, 2011, 257, 9587-9594.
- 4. M. D. Doganci, C. E. Cansoy, I. O. Ucar, H. Y. Erbil, E. Mielczarski, Mielczarski J. A. “Combined XPS and contact angle studies of flat and rough ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer films” Journal of Applied Polymer Science, 2012, 124 (3), 2100-2109.
- 5. N.A. Gengeç, U. Cengiz, M. D. Doganci, H. Y. Erbil, M. E. Pettitt, M. E. Callow, J. A. Callow “Effect of Contact Angle Hysteresis on the Release Properties of the Sporelings of the Green Alga Ulva on Fluoroacrylate Fouling Release Coatings” (under preparation, in 2012).
