Scattering at large scale facilities used to investigate the Bactiguard coating
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Bactiguard AB |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 100 000 |
| Project duration | August 2019 - November 2019 |
| Status | Completed |
| Venture | Research infrastructure - utilisation and collaboration |
| Call | Industrial pilot projects for utilisation of neutron- and photon based techniques at large scale infrastructures - spring 2019 |
| End-of-project report | 2019-02557_Bactiguard.pdf (pdf, 104 kB) |
Important results from the project
The Swedish medical technology company Bactiguard offers a solution that prevents hospital-related infections, reduces the use of antibiotics and spread of multi-resistant bacteria. This is done by a thin precious metal coating on the surface of medical products. More knowledge about the coating and what happens on the surface when in contact with different artificial body fluids is needed, regarding the thickness, relative amount of metals in the alloy and their distribution in the coating. The aim of the project was to identify techniques that can be used to answer these questions.
Expected long term effects
The goal of the project project was to identify a number of beamlines that we could use to analyze our thin precious metal surface that is stuck on different types of substrate, such as silicone and titanium. We found, among other things, that GI-SAXS, which is used to study nanostructured surfaces and thin films, fits us very well. It can be performed on beamline ID01 at ESRF in Grenoble and on beamlines BL 1-5 at SSRL in Stanford. In summary, the project has given us great insight into everything that can be done at these large-scale research facilities, which we want to use next year.
Approach and implementation
After initial discussions between the respective parties (Bactiguard, SU and UU), we worked on each side with a compilation of how the different methods work and where they can be implemented. In parallel, we also worked on Bactiguard to create a plan for how we would generate the coated surfaces that will be required for the analyzes in the future, and generated these. We then evaluated the results from the beamline studies, and added XPS as a method as we realized that it could also be useful for us to analyze the chemical composition in the surface. The implementation went according to plan.