DARPA WANTS GEAR THAT DECONTAMINATES ITSELF

The U.S. mil­i­tary has a pretty decent sys­tem for keep­ing its troops safe if there’s a bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal attack. But get­ting the tox­ins off of its gear — that’s a major has­sle. The Army still relies on a four-​​decade old, ultra-​​corrosive solu­tion to get rid of bio– or chem-​​agents. And new research, into toxic-​​eating enzymes and foams, hasn’t fully bloomed, yet.
So Darpa is on the hunt for mate­ri­als that can decon­t­a­m­i­nate them­selves. The bio­ci­dal coat­ings would be used for every­thing from elec­tron­ics to tank hulls, sen­sors to per­son­nel car­ri­ers’ insides.
In its call for pro­pos­als, issued last week, Darpa envi­sions a two-​​part research effort, last­ing a total of three-​​and-​​a-​​half years.
The research would be cen­tered in three areas: sur­face mod­i­fi­ca­tion, self-​​cleaning and renewal, and spo­ri­cide devel­op­ment.

First, the sur­face mod­i­fi­ca­tion thrust must demon­strate bio­ci­dal activ­ity on the sur­face with less than 0.5 per­cent addi­tive. This implies that a very small per­cent­age of the bulk mate­r­ial will con­tain the bio­ci­dal com­pound and that most of the effec­tive bio­cide will reside at the sur­face. Second, the self-​​cleaning thrust requires the bio­ci­dal sur­face prop­er­ties be per­sis­tent over ten (10) challenge/​renewal cycles. The third thrust, on spo­ri­cide devel­op­ment, requires the demon­stra­tion of a sur­face capa­ble of killing or ren­der­ing spores harmless. 

February 12th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.