Aizenberg stated that electrochemical deposition was an established technique used in manufacture of steel.

“I don’t want to create another line that would cost millions and millions of dollars and that no one would adopt,” Aizenberg said. She wanted to create a scalable process that would not affect the standard practices followed by the steel industry.

The material was tested in different ways - by scratching with diamond-tipped scribers, screwdrivers and stainless steel tweezers, and by repeatedly being hit with huge number of heavy, hard beads.
 

Following this, the material’s anti-wetting properties were tested using various types of liquids, including highly corrosive media, oil, water and biological fluids that contained blood and bacteria. The material demonstrated anti-biofouling behavior and repelled all of the liquid. Additionally, the tungsten oxide coating also enhanced the strength of steel.
 

Philseok Kim, co-author of the paper and co-founder and vice president of technology at SEAS spin-off SLIPS Technologies Inc., stated that the material holds significant promise for medical steel devices. “Because we show that this material successfully repels bacteria and blood, small medical implants, tools and surgical instruments like scalpels and needles that require both significant mechanical strength and anti-fouling property are high value-added products we are exploring for application and commercialization,” said Kim.
 

The material also holds considerable promise for functional 3D printing and microarray device applications. It could be very useful for printing highly sticky and viscous polymeric and biological materials, where contamination and friction are significant hindrances.

Every year, the effects of biofouling on hulls have cost the U.S. Navy tens of millions of dollars. Barnacles, algae and other such organisms create drag and increase the amount of energy required. Additionally, significant cost is involved in cleaning the hulls and reapplying anti-fouling paints. If this super-slick material could be scaled up, then it would hold promise as a cost-efficient, clean material.
 

“This research is an example of hard core, classic material science,” said Aizenberg. “We took a material that changed the world and asked, how can we make it better?”

The study paper on the new SLIPS-enhanced steel has been published in Nature Communications.