Inhibit Coatings

In 2016, Dr. Eldon Tate and Prof. Jim Johnston founded Inhibit Coatings, a start-up company that produces high-performance antimicrobial paints and coatings for food safety and healthcare. Their unique silver nanoparticle functionalization method produces low-leaching, physically robust coatings with a long lifetime. Silver particles are evenly dispersed throughout the polymer coating and bound to the resin backbone, with only very small amounts of silver typically used (less than 0.1%), due to silver’s excellent antimicrobial activity against over 650 different microorganisms. The technology has been applied to a variety of resin systems, including acrylics, epoxies, and polyurethanes.