Believe it or not, this is sharkskin.
And it's a little different
from your typical fishy scales.
It's made up of thousands of dermal denticles,
the toothlike structures you can see here.
And they're tough.
So tough that sharkskin by itself
can badly injure animals.
The trick to sharkskin is not just those denticles;
it's how they're structured.
All those denticles point backward,
making them smooth one way
but incredibly sharp and rough the other,
sort of like tiles on a roof.
That specific shape and alignment
interact with water in astounding ways.
Those grooved channels disrupt the flow,
forcing the water past and away from the shark's body,
significantly reducing drag
and even pulling sharks forward.
And unlike whales and manatees,
which are coated in barnacles and algae,
that same tiled pattern helps prevent those freeloaders
from hitching a ride on sharks.
And all of these properties have inspired engineers
to create the first antibacterial man-made pattern,
led, in part, by this man.
Tony Brennan: I am founder, chairman of the board,
and chief technology officer for Sharklet Technologies.
Narrator: Tony and his team have mimicked
the sharkskin pattern.
Brennan: This is a diamond shape that all shark scales have.
Narrator: And copied it onto a scalable surface.
Brennan: But when you try to draw that,
you end up with these two diamonds here that I've got.
Narrator: To work, the pattern Tony is holding
is scaled down to about 3 microns tall
and 2 microns wide.
Then it's imprinted onto a film,
creating millions of these microscopic channeled patterns.
Brennan: But if you look at this
and you look at this direction,
you see channels.
If you look at this direction,
you don't see any channels. It's walls.
That key element there provides an asymmetry.
And so water droplets behave differently,
depending on if you're tipping it this way,
this way, or at an angle.
Narrator: It's the precise alignment
of these asymmetrical lines and channels
that make it really hard for bacteria
to attach and colonize.
For bacteria to grow, they need a few things.
First, they like to be in a liquid droplet.
Brennan: So if I take this surface and I say to you,
I'm gonna take a droplet of water
and put it down on this surface.
Here comes the water droplet.
And if you look at this,
the water is not going down into the channels.
It's staying on top.
That's the major secret to Sharklet.
Narrator: Without being able to attach,
the droplet should simply roll off the Sharklet surface,
just like water pushes past typical sharkskin.
Secondly, bacteria like to stick together
and form what is known as a biofilm.
Christopher Jones: A biofilm's a community of bacteria
that adheres to a surface,
and they make their own matrix,
kind of like the glue or the cement
that will hold a bacterium to a surface.
And other bacteria can stick to that initial colonizer.
Narrator: Let's say a bacteria-filled droplet
fails to roll off the surface.
The bacteria will then fall into one of the many channels.
But the unique pattern makes it extremely difficult
for bacteria to find one another and link up
like they would on a smooth surface.
So while other antibacterial products
typically look to kill biofilms after they've formed,
Sharklet stops those biofilms
from forming in the first place.
This makes it especially useful in hospital settings.
With microorganisms unable to attach to the surface,
the film minimizes spread from surface to surface,
one of the main causes of disease transmission.
Jones: We show over 95% reduction in touch transfer
with Sharklet pattern compared to smooth
on multiple types of bacteria and fungi.
Narrator: That includes Staphylococcus aureus
and E. coli.
And Candida albicans, the fungi responsible for thrush,
showed over a 99% reduction in touch transfer.
And the pattern has also worked on viruses.
Recent work has looked at influenza B
and a coronavirus that's a close cousin of SARS-CoV-2.
Jones: And we show 80 to 85% reduction of transfer
of coronavirus and influenza
on our commercially available films.
Narrator: Since Sharklet is simply a film,
it can be applied almost anywhere.
In healthcare, they've begun adding it
to personal protective equipment
like face shields and gowns.
Jones: If you intelligently apply
where you put the Sharklet,
let's say things like elevator buttons, handrails,
doorknobs, things that are very high-touch surfaces,
you're really limiting the amount of exposure
from person to person.
Narrator: Yoga mats, pacifiers, pens,
and shopping carts are also being explored
and manufactured with the Sharklet pattern.
While the technology isn't a replacement
for cleaning surfaces, washing your hands,
or wearing face masks,
it's an additional tool that can help
fight the spread of diseases.
But Sharklet isn't alone.
Engineers are now using sharkskin as a model
for a whole heap of technologies,
like anti-barnacle paint, underwater robots,
and even on airplane wings to reduce drag.
So it's safe to say that you might not
look at sharks the same ever again,
and we've only just skimmed the surface.