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Structural metals/alloys are inevitable part of our daily life and numerous industrial applications. One key issue of using such materials is to maintain their structural/functional integrity and appearance from externalhazards. There are several methods such as chromate passivation, electrochemical plating, anodizing, and coating/painting to overcome these shortcomings. Generally, in those cases a protection layer forms on the metal surface, which consists of several tens to hundreds of µm in thickness. On the other hand, during last few decades a huge demand has emerged in materials science/technology for compact size, weight and sophisticated devices/tools. These trends have led to a significant advance in the field of nano-materials/technology, resulting in new innovations with structural metals/alloys. Considering reduced metal backbone dimensions and weight, protection layer has to be more sophisticated and thin, possibly below sub-micron level, with adequate performance and versatility. Therefore, it is need of hour to develop ultrathin, versatile, ecofriendly, and easy coating technique for state-of-the-art structural architectures.
At present, we demonstrate an efficient and versatile coatings technique inspired by an underwater bioadhesion mechanism. Many marine organisms survive under harsh deepsea condition and they do it by a unique adhesive foot, which contains mainly catechol and amine units. By mimicking this natural phenomenon, we prepared a wide-range of synthetic polymers for practical applications in diverse fields including anticorrosion, antifouling, adhesive, and smart coatings of metals/alloys.
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