UK and SCC Team Up to Confront COVID-19 With Antiviral Membrane, 3D-printed Face Masks

With funding and support from Kentucky's National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a team from UK and Somerset Community College (SCC) is creating 3D-printed, membrane-filtered face masks that can inactivate the coronavirus. The goal, through passive decontamination, is to not only protect people from breathing in viruses, but to eliminate them on contact.

Isabel Escobar, professor of chemical and materials engineering in the UK College of Engineering and associate director of UK’s Center of Membrane Sciences, is working to perfect the central component of the masks — the filter. This filter will contain a unique membrane composed of a polymer dissolved in a nontoxic, bio-derived solvent, which will then be chemically bound to medical-grade silver nanoparticles, known for their antiviral efficiency.

“The virus is about 120 nanometers in size — in the world of membranes, that's large. Even more so, it's not going to come as a virus by itself, flying in the air. It's going to come in the saliva, so it's going to be a much larger particle. A large particle is just not going through (this filter).” Dr. Escobar

But Escobar’s research takes it a step further, adding the silver nanoparticles for the passive disinfection.

Read the full story from University of Kentucky here.