TECH SPECIAL..... Beat infections with paper clothing

Beat infections with paper clothing

New Sanitising Technology Sets Stage For Self-Sterilising Fabrics

Imagine, walking out of a contaminated environment without a worry because you have on clothes that sanitise themselves. Researchers working to develop personal protective equipment that might contain the spread of infectious diseases, such as the devastating 2014 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, have developed a paper-based sanitiser that may one day be suitable for clothing that sterilises itself.

And the technology at work is inexpensive as well, according to the researchers. The invention consists of paper with thin layers of aluminium and hexagon honeycomb patterns that serve as electrodes to produce plasma, or ionised gas. Explaining the use of paper, Aaron Mazzeo, an assistant professor at Rutgers University in the US and one of the researchers involved in the study , said, “Paper is an ancient material, but it has unique attributes for new, high-tech applications.“

“We found that by applying high voltage to stacked sheets of metallised paper, we were able to generate plasma, which is a combination of heat, ultraviolet radiation and ozone that kill microbes,“ Mazzeo added.

The fibrous and porous nature of the paper allows gas to permeate it, fuelling the plasma and facilitating cooling.

“To our knowledge, we are the first to use paper as a base to generate plasma,“ said Jingjin Xie, lead author of the study , published in the journal `Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'.

In experiments, the paperbased sanitisers killed more than 99% of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a yeast species) and more than 99.9% of E coli bacteria cells. Most E coli bacteria are harmless and an important part of a healthy human intestinal tract. However, some types can cause diarrhoea, urinary tract infections, pneumonia and other illnesses.

“Preliminary results showed that our sanitisers can kill spores from bacteria, which are hard to kill using conventional sterilisation methods,“ said Qiang Chen, a doctoral candidate at Rutgers. In the future, the paper-based sanitisers may also prove suitable for devices that sanitise laboratory equipment and smart bandages to heal wounds, among other uses,the researchers said.

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