Making nano-enabled coatings safe and sustainable by design: opportunities and challenges

Nano-enabled coatings have emerged as advanced solutions for diverse coating applications. By manipulating materials at the nanoscale, these coatings provide enhanced properties, e.g. durability, corrosion resistance, self-cleaning, hydrophobicity or antimicrobial activity to metals, glass, ceramics, and textiles. Not only they offer advanced performance but also act as substitutes to traditional coatings linked to toxicity, such as hard chromium. However, they also must be shown to be safe alternatives, in order to avoid regrettable substitutions.

Originating from the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) concept aims to offer a novel approach in guiding innovation away from harmful substances towards sustainable, competitive alternatives. The EU has been working on an actionable framework to facilitate the process. The SSbD framework is still under development, but has already offered opportunities, and challenges to European researchers, industry and regulators.

In my presentation, I will be giving examples of research focussing on performance and properties of nano-enabled coatings along with data on their behaviour, both as pristine, as well as aged, in scenarios that simulate their life cycle. I will be emphasising that understanding fundamental behaviour at the nanoscale, offers new tools to predict coating behaviour, toxicity and sustainability in tandem, supporting, facilitating and streamlining the SSbD approach.

Acknowledgment: The work was supported by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (SABYDOMA Project, GA-862296) and Horizon Europe UKRI Guarantee (MOZART Project, GA-101058450).