A real innovative surface technology, known as the Sharklet, has been introduced by Sharklet Technolgies Inc. This surface design is inspired by the skin of a shark and reduces bacterial growth without causing resistance, and thus helps protecting for damaging biofilms and microorganisms.
The shark skin technology consists of a series of micro-sized bars interlocking in a diamond pattern. The most important and unique feature of the material is that bacteria accumulation is prevented purely by its surface structure and no chemicals have to be added.
The technology will be mainly used for hospital surface coatings and medical devices.
For which products the Sharklet micropattern design could be beneficial are momentarily being evaluated. Sharklet Technologies has currently partnered up with a medical device firm from China in order to clinically test the micropattern surface technology. This Chinese firm called Peaceful Union wants to advance developing the Sharklet for medical purposes and the surface is now going to clinical trial.
The Sharklet micropattern has shown promising results in clinical pilot studies for further products in the near future.
Sharklet Technologies created the Sharklet in 2007 when a research started about prevention of the coating by algae of marine surfaces, like Naval ships, led to the shark skin pattern. By researching which marine animals skin were not fouling, the unique structure of the sharks skin became apparent.
By experimenting the skin structure was transformed in the Sharklet pattern, It was discovered that no bacterial biofilms were forming on the sharklet pattern and this lead to discovering that no E. coli bacteria were sticking to the pattern and this led to Sharklet Technologies Inc.
The conventional way of killing microorganisms by using disinfectants and antibiotics has led to the creation of resistant bacteria like MRSA for instance. This makes new strategies for managing bacterial growth necessary. By the prevention of bacterial accumulation and growth to begin with, the Sharklet is the perfect solution for this problem.
