Marine Antifouling

Ocean immersion testing is generally considered the “gold standard” for evaluating the performance of marine coatings. Coatings are typically prepared on large raft panels and immersed in the ocean to evaluate the accumulation and adhesion strength of fouling organisms over time. Although effective, ocean immersion testing does not adequately accommodate the testing of coatings generated with a high throughput screening approach adopted at NDSU. In this regard, ocean immersion testing requires large amounts of coating material to coat panels, is seasonal, requires several weeks to months of exposure, and is quite labor intensive. As a result, a high-throughput biological screening workflow was developed at NDSU to rapidly explore large material design spaces for identification of promising antifouling and fouling-release coating candidates.