Patent ID: 8268395

Claim:
A method for providing resistance to biofouling in a porous support, comprising: a) providing a porous support; b) providing a gelling mixture comprising a solvent and one or more organogelator(s); c) applying the gelling mixture to the porous support to provide a coated support; d) gelling the coated support to form a porous nanoweb gel that contains fibrous structures that have a dimension of up to one micron; and e) removing the solvent(s) from the porous nanoweb gel to provide a treated support comprising a porous nanoweb coating; wherein the treated support is characterized by a biofilm cell count of less than 50% that of an untreated porous support control and the porous nanoweb coating comprises self assembled fibrous structures of from 10 nm to 1000 nm average fiber diameter.