Laser surface texturing inhibits Biofilm formation

Abstract

Biofilm development on surfaces leads to biofouling, which is an undesirable phenomenon in the marine industry. Marine fouling leads to an increase in fuel consumption and corrosion of propeller blades. Most of the antifouling technologies available today are chemical methods that have detrimental effects on the environment. The current work focused on producing non-toxic and effective antifouling systems to control biofilm formation on the titanium alloy surfaces, which has potentially wide range of applications in the marine industry, such as propeller blades, the hull of the ships, heat exchangers, and offshore piping systems. A laser micro-machining was used in this study for the generation of surface texture patterns on the titanium specimens. The contact angle of the untextured surface was 28°, but the wettability of the textured surface increased with a contact angle of 134° for a square pit and 112° for a triangular pit. Surface roughness of the untextured sample showed Ra = 3.811 μm, but post-laser-texturing, the Ra value increased to 10.66 μm and 9.55 μm for the square pit pattern and triangular pit pattern, respectively. Microbes formed biofilm on the untextured specimen but, the square textured surface showed no apparent biofilm formation, while the biofilm was found in triangular textured surface as seen under the fluorescence and scanning electron microscope. The biofilm biomass was significantly reduced in the square textured surface. This work showed that laser textured surfaces might be potentially used to reduce biofilm development on the surfaces. Unlike most methods used for reducing bacterial adhesion, this kind of physical alteration of the surface topography is non-toxic, and it will help to prolong the life of the components used in the marine environment.