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With the frequent occurrence of global public health events, pathogen prevention and control has become the focus of close attention of the society. As one of the core materials for pathogen prevention and control, personal protective fabrics can effectively cut off the transmission pathways of pathogens and protect people's lives and health. However, traditional protective fabrics and products have limited barrier capabilities against pathogens such as bacteria and viruses, and do not have active disinfection functions, which may induce secondary pollution; and improving safety barriers will inevitably lose the comfort of the fabric itself to varying degrees. Protective fabrics that have both safety barriers and comfort are often still in the laboratory development stage due to high costs and complex manufacturing processes. Therefore, developing a type of protective fabric that meets high safety, high comfort and scalable mass production has become one of the important directions for researching protective materials.
Recently, the research team of Yu Hao, a researcher at Donghua University, published a research result entitled "Mass-Producible Hybrid Polytetrafluoroethylene Nanofiber Mat with Radial Island-Chain Architecture as Anti-Pathogen Cloth in Individual Protection" in Advanced Fiber Materials. This study combines organic-inorganic hybrid technology with asynchronous stretching technology to develop an anti-pathogen hybrid polytetrafluoroethylene nanofiber membrane (HPNFM) that can be mass-produced. The unique radial "island-chain" nanoporous structure gives it excellent waterproofness and breathability/wetness, which can greatly improve the comfort of the fabric; the "island-chain" structure is combined with high-efficiency anti-pathogen nanoparticles exposed on the surface, and the use of coupled electrostatic induction and active oxygen pathogen disinfecting mechanism can achieve efficient antibacterial and antiviral properties. The personal protective clothing based on HPNFM designed and manufactured on this basis has broken through the "triangle rule" of protective clothing in high safety, high comfort and scalable production, and has great application potential in responding to the future epidemic of "X disease" and protecting people's lives and health.
The main point of this paper
Cuprous oxide nanoparticles (Cu2O NPs) were used as antipathogen nanohybrid materials, and stearic acid (SA) and isoparaffin (IP) were used as modifiers and dispersants, respectively, to successfully construct modified cuprous oxide nanoparticles (mCu2O NPs) that can be stably dispersed and have heat and oxidation resistance, as shown in Figure 1. SA, as a modifier, forms a hydrophobic layer on the surface of Cu2O NPs, improving its dispersibility and stability in IP. More importantly, during the thermal setting process of the nanofiber membrane (380°C), SA can absorb heat and oxygen by its own thermal oxygen decomposition, thereby ensuring the stability and antipathogen activity of cuprous oxide.
After hybrid mixing, paste extrusion, thermoforming stretching and other processes, the researchers successfully prepared HPNFMs with a radial "island-chain" nanostructure, as shown in Figure 2. HPNFMs have a radial "fibril-node" interlaced fiber network structure similar to that of pure PTFE nanofiber membrane (PNFM) in microscopic morphology. At the same time, a large number of cuprous oxide nanoparticles are exposed at the nodes, which can ensure the high antibacterial and antiviral properties of HPNFMs.
The study found that HPNFMs have significant properties such as nanoscale pore size, ultra-high porosity, ultra-high air permeability, high waterproofness and moisture permeability (Figure 3). Further analysis by zeta potential and Kelvin probe microscopy (KPFM) showed that the surface of HPNFMs showed a differentiated trend of positive node potential and negative nanofiber potential, which can induce negatively charged bacteria and viruses and other pathogens to migrate to the nodes. Combined with the results of singlet oxygen radiant probe, HPNFMs can effectively couple electrostatic induction and reactive oxygen pathogen disinfecting mechanism to achieve efficient antibacterial and antiviral properties.
This study used Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus as bacterial models, and found through colony counting analysis that with the increase in the amount of cuprous oxide nanoparticles added, the antibacterial properties of HPNFMs gradually increased, and the bacterial morphology showed wrinkled and ruptured characteristics at the microscopic level. When the addition amount was 4.0 wt%, there was almost no colony growth in the culture dish, indicating that HPNFMs had certain broad-spectrum antibacterial properties (Figure 4).
In the evaluation of antiviral effects, the study used red fluorescent gene-modified infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) and human alveolar adenocarcinoma basal epithelial cells (A549) as infectious pathogens and infected cells, respectively. Compared with the blank group and the control group, the intracellular fluorescence intensity of the experimental group (HPNFMs) decreased significantly, indicating that a large number of viruses had been inactivated by ROS at the surface nodes of HPNFMs and had no ability to infect cells, showing efficient antiviral properties (Figure 5).
On this basis, the researchers designed and manufactured active protective clothing based on hybrid PTFE nanofiber membranes. Compared with traditional protective clothing, this protective clothing can not only play a breathable and moisture-permeable role, effectively realize heat and moisture transfer, and ensure comfort, but also effectively inactivate bacteria and viruses during the service life of protective clothing, realize functional inheritance from HPNFMs to protective products, and meet the performance requirements of high safety, high comfort and scalable production of protective fabrics and products (Figure 6).
In summary, this study successfully developed an antibacterial and antiviral hybrid PTFE nanofiber membrane with a radial "island-chain" structure through organic-inorganic hybridization and asynchronous stretching technology. The radial "island-chain" structure is composed of "island" nodes with highly dispersed antipathogenic cuprous oxide nanoparticles and interwoven "chain" nanofibers. Based on this radial "island-chain" structure, the comfort (waterproofness, breathability, air permeability, etc.) and antipathogen performance (broad-spectrum antibacterial and antiviral properties) of the nanofiber membrane were systematically evaluated and optimized. Furthermore, the optimized HPNFMs were used to design and manufacture active protective personal protective clothing with high comfort, high safety and mass production. This research breaks through the "triangle law" barrier of personal protective materials and provides new ideas for the development of the next generation of personal protective products.
Electrospinning Nanofibers Article Source:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42765-024-00456-y
