Enhanced Boiling & Condensation Patents: Top Companies, Trends 2026
Enhanced boiling and condensation surface patents: who leads and where activity is heading
Concentrated at the top. the leading assignee alone accounts for 71 of 397 records, and the top 5 combined hold 42.1% of all records in scope. Filings rose from 23 records in 2017 to a peak of 58 in 2023, then eased to 22 in 2024 — a 27% decline from 2021's 30 records over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are partial: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the last one to two years will keep rising as more records surface.
- 1NUCLERA LTD71
- 2MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH37
- 3FRACTAL NETWORKS LLC36
- 4KELVIN THERMAL TECHNOLOGIES INC12
- 5THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIV OF ILLINOIS11
See the full enhanced boiling and condensation surfaces analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most patents in enhanced boiling and condensation surfaces?
One assignee leads the ranked list with 71 of the 397 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 11. The top 5 assignees combined account for 42.1% of all records, and the top 10 extend that to 52.9%. Below that tier, filing drops into a long tail of organisations with single-digit record counts, so freedom-to-operate work should treat the leadership tier and the long tail as separate risk profiles.
Is patent filing in this field growing or slowing down?
Filing volume rose from 23 records in 2017 to a peak of 58 in 2023, then eased to 22 in 2024 — a 27% decline over the 2021-to-2024 span. However, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation of a continued slowdown. A clearer read on the post-2023 trend will only be available once those years finish publishing.
What is the difference between dropwise condensation and enhanced boiling surface patents?
Dropwise condensation patents typically claim surface treatments — coatings, wettability patterns, or textures — that cause condensate to form discrete droplets rather than a continuous film, improving heat transfer on the condensation side. Enhanced boiling surface patents instead target nucleation site density and critical heat flux on the boiling side, often through porous coatings or engineered cavity geometry like the asymmetric bubble-directing structures seen in representative filings. Many records in this dataset combine both mechanisms, which is why IPC coverage spans both heat-exchanger hardware classes and coating-process classes.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Enhanced Boiling and Condensation Surfaces covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.