Dust is already common when it comes to surfaces. People experience dust in households and vehicles. But machinery and equipment also experience this, some of it causing loss of efficiency or breakdowns.
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Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin partnered with North Carolina-based company Smart Material Solution Inc. to develop a new method to keep dust from sticking to surfaces. The result is the ability to make many types of materials dust resistant, from spacecraft to solar panels to household windows.
Anti-Dust Technology
Researchers from the University of Texas and Smart Materials Solutions Inc. collaborated to develop a new method to keep dust from sticking to surfaces. The study was published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
According to Interesting Engineering, the technology requires no extra energy or resources to prevent dust from surfaces both on Earth and in Space. This will be a game changer since through this technology, people will not use anymore an antistatic spray or vacuum that needs fluid or electricity to utilize.
Cockrell School of Engineering's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering Professor Chih-Hao Change is the lead author of the study. "What we've demonstrated here is a surface that can clean itself. Particulates aren't able to stick to the surface, so they come off using just the force of gravity," he noted in a press release.
Anti-dust technology has been around for a while, but it was not released out of the lab due to several issues regarding its scale. Nanocoining and nanoimprinting were utilized in the study, which are fabrication techniques that were used to print patterns on items more modernly, like newspapers, images, etc.
Research Testing
As per UT News, this study involves things that are not visible to the human eye. Due to its sharp and angular structures, dust particles struggle to cling to surfaces with this technology. This will lead to dust attaching to one another roll of the surface powered by gravity.
During the test, researchers used lunar dust and turned each surface on its side. Only 2% of the surface remained dusty as the result. Usually, 35% of dust stays on surfaces without newly developed technology.
The researchers provided a passive solution as they develop a technology that does not require any extra energy or materials to solve this problem. Compared to other solutions that will require more active solutions.
Eureka Alert reported that NASA's Small Business Innovation Research program funded this research to focus on space technology as space dust is becoming pesky, which can turn into a high-risk problem since cleaning off dust may be challenging to others. For an instance, dust became a big part of causing Mars rovers to fail during the Apollo missions.
One of the lead authors in the study named Samuel Lee stated, "There's not much you can do about lunar dust in space - it sticks to everything and there's no real way to wipe it off or spray it off. Dust on solar panels of Mars rovers can cause them to fail."
