Functional Surfaces for Passive Fungal Proliferation Control: Effect of Surface Micro- and Nanotopography, Material, and Wetting Properties.

Fungal proliferation can lead to adverse effects for human health, due to the production of pathogenic and allergenic toxins and also through the creation of fungal biofilms on sensitive surfaces (i.e., medical equipment).

Durable, Ultrathin, and Antifouling Polymer Brush Coating for Efficient Condensation Heat Transfer.

Heat exchangers are made of metals because of their high heat conductivity and mechanical stability. Metal surfaces are inherently hydrophilic, leading to inefficient filmwise condensation. It is still a challenge to coat these metal surfaces with a durable, robust, and thin hydrophobic layer, which is required for efficient dropwise condensation.

Using chaotic dynamics to characterize the complexity of rough surfaces.

In this work, we use the basic ingredients of chaotic dynamics (stretching and folding of phase space points) for the characterization of the complexity of microscopy images of rough surfaces. The key idea is to use an image as the initial condition of a chaotic discrete dynamical system, such as the Arnold cat map, and track its transformations during the first iterations of the map. Since the basic effects of the Arnold map are the stretching and folding of image texture, the application of the map leads to an enhancement of the high frequency content of images along with an increase of discontinuities in pixel intensities.