Current Week Activities:
– Abandoned the weave idea and focused on an aluminum metal surface with bumps
– Coated the surface with i-PP and painted the bumps with P4VP
– Resolved our three tests for our prototype: overnight test, boiled water test, mist test
– Continued to work on outlining final paper, presentation, and poster
– Continued blog website
– Received Pyrrole and synthesized nano-fibers of poly-pyrrole for testing as a suitable hydrophilic base material
Proposed Work for the Upcoming Week:
Research:
- Look into a sealed chamber that may be manipulated to control temperature and relative humidity
Laboratory:
- Test the prototypes of i-PP + P4VP with the three different tests.
- Test the poly-pyrrole for hydrophilicity, apply this to the bumps on our metal sheet.
- Continue constructing our prototypes
Time Log:
– David Pérez: 12 hours
– Matthew Rohde: 23 hours
– Noah Lozada: 25 hours
– Adrian Yao: 26 hours
Comments:
We have completely abandoned the idea of using any kind of weave. However the idea of a surface more closely mimics the Namibian beetle. While the surfaces we have produced with i-PP as the super-hydrophobic base and P4VP painted on the peaks acting as our super-hydrophilic material have had exciting results, we are hopeful that the poly-pyrrole fibers which we have only just begun to work with will exhibit stronger hydrophilicity. This weekend we will spend the entirety of our lab time working with applying poly-pyrrole to the peaks of our metal surface. After we have successfully applied the poly-pyrrole we will test extensively up until our project presentation.