BENGALURU: To bolster the battle against the highly-transmissible Omicron variant, a team of Indian scientists from Bengaluru, in collaboration with an industry partner, have developed a self-disinfecting ‘Copper-based nanoparticle-coated Antiviral Face Mask’.The mask, which is biodegradable, highly breathable and washable, is said to exhibit high performance against the Covid-19 virus as well as several other viral and bacterial infections.
The special mask was developed by scientists at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous R&D Centre of Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the government of India in collaboration with the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB) and Resil Chemicals, a Bengaluru-based company under the DST-sponsored Nano-Mission project.The commonly used masks only retain the viruses by filtering and fail to kill them.
An Information department release said “with no antiviral or antibacterial property, it is very difficult to control transmission by wearing the conventional mask, particularly in densely populated places like hospitals, airports, stations, shopping malls and so on, where the virus load is very high,” the release stated.
To this end, ARCI developed copper-based nanoparticles of around 20 nanometres by a Flame Spray Pyrolysis (FSP) processing facility. The coated fabric exhibited an efficacy of more than 99.9% against bacteria. CSIR-CCMB tested the efficacy of this fabric against SARS-CoV-2 for disinfection properties and reported 99.9% disinfection.The masks are biodegradable and hence easily disposable.