Enhanced Boiling & Condensation Patents: Top Companies, Trends 2026
- 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.
- Coating chemistry outweighs hardware. B05D coating-process and C09D coatings/paints/inks classes together touch a larger share of records than any single heat-exchanger hardware class.
- Filing has cooled from its 2023 peak. activity peaked at 58 records in 2023, and 2021-to-2024 volumes are down 27% — though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag.
Filing growth compares 2021 (30 records) with 2024 (22) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 397 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Enhanced boiling and condensation surfaces sit at the intersection of surface chemistry and thermal hardware: superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic coatings, wettability patterning, and porous coating structures that raise nucleation site density or push critical heat flux higher on a heat-exchanger wall. The search set captures records that combine a boiling- or condensation-surface concept with a specific performance mechanism — nucleation density, critical heat flux, wettability patterning, porous coatings, microfin tubes or noncondensable-gas handling — rather than generic heat-transfer filings.
397 records fall inside this scope between 2015 and the 2026-07-31 cut-off, spanning receiving offices from the USPTO and WIPO's PCT route through the EPO, India, Australia and Canada. The mix of IPC classes present — heat-exchanger hardware alongside coating-process and coatings chemistry classes — signals that claim activity is split fairly evenly between the physical structure of the surface and the chemistry deposited on it.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 397-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the records fall under.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
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.
IPC subclass composition
F28F (heat-exchanger details) leads at 23.2% of the 397 records, followed by B05D (coating processes) at 16.6% and C09D (coatings, paints and inks) at 13.6%. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read as coverage, not as a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 397 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Enhanced Boiling and Condensation Surfaces with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about enhanced boiling and condensation surfaces and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
US10697629B2 — Devices with an enhanced boiling surface with features directing bubble and liquid flow
An enhanced boiling apparatus includes a substrate having at least one heated region, at least one outer surface, and one or more asymmetric shaped cavities extending into the substrate along the at least one outer surface. Each of the one or more asymmetric shaped cavities has a sidewall which intersects at a corner with a bubble pathway surface with a different slope from the sidewall. Each of the asymmetric shaped cavities is configured to non-gravitationally direct fluid that is moving along the sidewall out along the bubble pathway surface.Filed by Rochester Institute of Technology; granted 2020-06-30.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US10812992B1 | Cellular system | 418 |
| 2 | US20110017431A1 | Flexible thermal ground plane and manufacturing the same | 165 |
| 3 | US10461421B1 | Cellular system | 109 |
| 4 | US20140113144A1 | Superhydrophobic nanocomposite coatings | 92 |
| 5 | US20080038458A1 | Superhydrophilic coatings | 75 |
| 6 | US20080268229A1 | Superhydrophilic coatings | 55 |
| 7 | US20150210951A1 | Multifunctional repellent materials | 53 |
| 8 | WO2009118552A1 | Superhydrophobic coatings and method for making the same | 53 |
| 9 | US20090324308A1 | Oil less fusing using nano/micro textured fusing surfaces | 50 |
| 10 | WO2014012079A1 | Multifunctional repellent materials | 44 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older records are structurally favoured — treat this table as a signal of influence within the corpus, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once the assignee ranking, IPC mix and filing trend are read together.
A narrow leadership tier sits above a long tail
The leading assignee holds 71 records on its own, and the top 5 combined take 42.1% of all 397 records in scope; the top 10 extend that to 52.9%. Below that tier, filing activity thins quickly into single- and double-digit filers, which is where freedom-to-operate work should focus.
Coating chemistry rivals hardware claims
F28F leads the class breakdown, but B05D coating processes (16.6%) and C09D coatings, paints and inks (13.6%) together cover a comparable share of records to the top hardware classes. Surface chemistry claims are not a side branch here — they are a primary claiming route.
Volume has eased from its 2023 peak
Filings peaked at 58 records in 2023 before falling to 22 in 2024, a decline in line with the -27% three-year figure. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025-2026 counts will still rise as more records are published; they should not yet be read as a further slowdown.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to enhanced boiling and condensation surfaces, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked list covers 100 companies across the full 397-record set. Filing concentration at the top does not mean the surrounding claim space is closed — several mechanistic sub-areas show thin coverage relative to their share of the underlying science.
A single assignee well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 71 of 397 records, roughly six times the count at fifth place (11). That gap suggests a deliberate, sustained filing programme rather than opportunistic single filings.
A shallow drop-off through the next tier
Record counts fall from 11 at fifth place to 7 at tenth, a gentler slope than the gap to the leader. This tier is where multiple research institutions and specialty coating firms compete on comparable footing.
Collaboration is limited and mostly academic
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest links pair individual inventors or a university with named lab researchers rather than joint corporate ventures. Cross-company co-filing is not yet a norm in this field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Nuclera Biotech Co., Ltd. | 2 | -71% |
| TRAN BAO | 0 | -100% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
| TRAN HA | 0 | — |
| Nucleic Acid Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Kelvin Thermal Technologies Inc. | 0 | — |
| Nelumbo Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is filing strategy, freedom-to-operate, or technology scouting.
Map claim scope against the mid-tier assignees
The gentle drop-off between fifth and tenth place means several organisations hold comparable claim positions. A claims-level comparison across that tier will show where their coverage actually overlaps versus where it diverges.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaTrack the 2025-2026 filings as they publish
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most decision-relevant filings from the last two years are still arriving. Re-running this view periodically will surface the true post-2023 trend.
Set up trend tracking in EurekaStress-test the white-space sub-areas
Thin filing density in areas like wettability patterning on microfin tubes or coating durability under thermal cycling is worth validating against the underlying science before committing a filing budget.
Run a white-space search in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
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.
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.
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.
F28F (heat-exchanger details) covers the largest share of records at 23.2% of the 397 in scope, reflecting claims on the physical hardware. B05D (coating processes) and C09D (coatings, paints and inks) follow at 16.6% and 13.6% respectively, showing that surface chemistry claims are filed nearly as often as hardware claims. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages overlap rather than sum to a whole, and a thorough search should cover both the hardware and chemistry sides.
Relative to the dense coverage in core heat-exchanger and coating classes, mechanistic sub-areas such as noncondensable-gas venting in dropwise condensation, wettability patterning specifically on microfin tube geometries, and long-term durability of superhydrophobic coatings under thermal cycling show thinner filing density. These are not unclaimed, but they carry less concentrated coverage than the leading assignees' core hardware and coating claims, making them worth a targeted search before committing a filing strategy there.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.