(55f) Bacterially Super Anti-Adhesive, Optically Transparent Coatings Inspired from Rice Leaves

Bacterial fouling is responsible not only for the functional deterioration of numerous surfaces and devices but also for the transmission of infection and disease through such surfaces and devices. Bacterial adhesion to surface, which is the first step in the bacterial fouling, is governed by the interplay among the physicochemical, interfacial, and geometrical characteristics of the surface and bacteria. Hence, various surface modification approaches have been applied and considered to control the interactions between bacteria and surfaces and to prevent bacterial attachment to surfaces. For this purpose, especially, surfaces based on nature-inspired approaches have shown promising potential in the reduction and inhibition of bacterial adhesion. In this presentation, we report a rice leaf-inspired approach to produce novel surfaces with optical transparency and repellency against bacterial suspensions. These bio-inspired surfaces involve unique hollow nanodisc morphology and showed strong water and bacterial suspension repellency with contact angles above 150 °. In addition, these surfaces display excellent bacterial anti-adhesion properties with an adhesion inhibition efficiency of > 99.9% for both Gram-negative Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in comparison to pristine quartz surfaces (negative control)