Aero-manufacture of nanobulges for an in-place anticoronaviral on air filters

A team of researchers lead by Professor Jungho Hwang developed an electrically operable dispenser for decorating continuous ultrafine Fe–Zn, Fe–Ag, or Fe–Cu particles (<5 nm) onto SiO2 nanobeads to form nanobulges with antiviral characteristics. The finding of this research was published the Journal of Hazardous Materials (I.F. 12.50).The resulting nanobulges were exposed to human coronaviruses (HCoV) to assess antiviral function. The nanobulges exhibited comparable antiviral activity to Zn, Ag, and Cu particles while retaining biosafety in both in vitro and in vivo models because of the significantly smaller metallic fractions. The interest in removing contagious viruses from indoor air using ventilation and filtration systems is increasing rapidly because people spend most of the day indoors. The development of an effective platform to regenerate the antiviral function of air filters during use and safe abrogation of used filters containing infectious viruses is a very challenging since an on-demand safe-by-design manufacture system is essential for in-place antiviral coatings. *This study was supported by the Technology Innovation Program (20007027, Mutually beneficial cooperative air purifying automobiles against atmospheric fine particles) funded By the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE, Korea). This work was also supported by Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI) through Core Technology Development Project for Environmental Diseases Prevention and Management, funded by Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE) (ARQ202201527001).

The link: doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.130458