Article published April 02, 2007
BGSU team turns paint into marine herbicide
Patent sought for anti-fouling coating
By JENNI LAIDMAN
BLADE SCIENCE WRITER
What if you could turn one of the most popular liquid pesticides into a solid when you expose it to light?
Douglas Neckers and a team at the Center for Photochemical Sciences at Bowling Green State University did just that, converting the active ingredient in Roundup into a light-curable coating that may keep boats from fouling with algae.
Although this straightforward capability may add a long-lasting, potentially safe coating to the marine industry's resources, the invention has some interesting potential: It could allow technicians to imprint vegetation the way they imprint silicon chips.
Why would you want to print messages in algae? Mr. Neckers, director of the prestigious photochemical sciences center, doesn't know. But he figures someone could have a use for the invention, which he dubs "biophotoresists."
"Scientists worldwide will think of lots of other compounds they can make, and lots of real reasons to convert them to images," he said. "We have no pretense that it has any application at all, but the idea is there."
He said the familiar process by which computer chips are patterned was a similar trick without an application when it was created.
Mr. Neckers remembered his work 25 years ago on glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, when his lab received money from the Office of Naval Research to produce an herbicidal paint. His plan was to turn glyphosate into a complex of molecules called a polymer and used it as the anti-fouling coating.
It was no trivial task.
"I didn't have very high expectations,'' said Aneta Bogdanova, whose efforts created the polymer. "Just looking at the structure, I expected to have some difficulties."
Ms. Bogdanova was lead author on a paper on this work in the current issue of the journal Biomacromolecules. She is research and development director for Performance Coatings International in New Jersey.
The Office of Naval Research declined to comment on the research, saying it was too early to evaluate it, but BGSU is seeking a patent on the work.
Daniel Berger, a professor of chemistry at Bluffton University, also was involved with the research.
What is unique about this compound is that herbicide is actually bound into the polymer, and not simply a filler, and its release is "just barely detectable," he said.
Most marine anti-fouling paints work by slowly leaching chemicals that kill vegetation. Eventually, there is no herbicide left.
But this new material is a "very, very slow-release biocide,'' he said. "The release rate is just barely detectable. Yet it's herbicidal."
Its ability to operate as a "biophotoresist" is based on the fact that it is light curable. A surface covered with this compound could be etched with laser light. Or it could be covered with a template with a pattern cut in and then exposed to light.
The exposed portions would become polymer, the remainder would wash away.
"What the end application of the technology would be is anybody's guess," Mr. Neckers said. "That's the way science works."
Contact Jenni Laidman at:
jenni@theblade.com
or 419-724-6507.
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