spotLESS Materials

spotLESS’s CEO Birgitt Boschitsch is a mechanical engineering alumna at Penn State. CTO Tak-Sing Wong is a Wormley Early Career Professor. The technical lead of the project is graduate student Jing Wang. Their product is a liquid-entrenched smooth surface (LESS) coating that is a sprayable, antifouling coating. The product can be applied to toilet and sanitation facilities. The product decreases the amount of water needed when flushing the toilet by more than 90 percent and could help conserve water. The LESS coating is bio-inspired liquid-, sludge-, and bacteria-repellent and it turns sticky surfaces into self-cleaning ones. The coating has a slippery function that is claimed to have the ability to passively prevent accumulation of contaminants such as bacteria, urine and feces. The product can be integrated into medical devices and sanitation facilities.

spotLESS Materials won $367, 500 in a pitch competition for third place at the 2019 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC). The team won the grand prize of $50,000 in 2018 at the Allegheny Cleantech University Prize Collegiate Competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. spotLESS has received an NSF SBIR Phase I grant and has participated in the Ben Franklin TechCelerator program.