Coating solids with immobilized liquids could help to deal with dangerous bacterial biofilms.

Many bacterial species form durable slimes that can cover everything from medical devices to ship hulls. Joanna Aizenberg at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her team showed that slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) — in which a liquid is 'locked' onto a solid through affinities between the two — can resist biofilm growth.

Whereas conventional slippery surfaces such as Teflon were colonized by biofilms within hours, SLIPS reduced the attachment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms by 99.6% over seven days. Similar success rates were seen against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. SLIPS are stable under a variety of conditions and their anti-biofilm properties are not due to toxicity of the immobilized liquid. This makes them candidates for many anti-biofilm applications, say the authors.

Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1201973109 (2012)