Nanosurfaces 2017 – the first of hopefully an annual event – created by Dr Martin Kemp, founder of xcience.co.uk and Chair of the Institute of Materials where the event was held.

The very convincing and compelling keynote was given by Stephen Coulson as his success story with pi2.com – Perform, Protect, Improve – to develop water repellant coating for electronics and hearing aids.

The complete programme of speakers is published here. I showed these five slides in five minutes in the afternoon, demonstrating Mona Lisa opening her eyes for this elite audience as an apparently unforgettable event. I now need to look for ‘end users’, I’m told.

I noted here particularly those who I thought would benefit from using our method to re-visualise images in True Colour 3D – the tool with which ‘domain experts’:-

• define selection criteria in terms of whole images, series of images or regions of interest; 
• set boundary conditions in terms of numerical values for Digital Colour Brightness that the software visualises;
• so that ‘off limit events’ can be flagged up during Smart Monitoring.

Patrick Cullen from UCL  spoke about Ionic Solutions of Two-Dimensional Materials

Regarding 2D nanomaterials:

• size matters!
• properties: enhanced hardness with excellent toughness and even flexibility!
  • these are the qualitative measures I’d like to see quantified with the aid of our imaging method!

He called graphene the archetype of 2D nanomaterials!

Dr Yuri Zhuk – from Hardide Coatings Ltd presented Nanostructured CVD Tungsten Carbide Coatings protect against Wear, Erosion and Corrosion

Stephen Voller – from ZapGo.com is after the right materials to make batteries faster, with a long life, safe and recyclable.

Thomas O’Loughlin – from Texas A & M University – spoke about the challenges of separating oil from water which the Canadian Oil Sands Corporation needed.

Dr Alistair Kean is an independent consultant @nikaworks.com – bridging the cultural and financial gaps between industry, academia and individuals. He recommended visiting the images that Johnson Matthey make available. I had begun to re-visualise gold and platinum pictures!

Here are my bullet points from his presentation about Functional Coatings for Healthcare:

• Structural vs bulk coating – moving from 2D to 3D – was of course particularly fascinating to me, as I’m really clear about the ‘fifty shades of 3D‘;
• From thin films to nanomaterials
• What is a nano-coating?
  • biocompatible nanoporous coatings
  • metamaterials
  • ultra-hard coating for stainless steel
• New facility: health care.

Dr Ramin Djalali from Lysis Technologies spoke about Coating and Printing of Nanostructured Surfaces.

• This is of course a company that might be interested in the article I wrote for Image Reports about Digital Colour Brightness as the bridge between RGB and CMYK.