Technical Textile Coatings for Facemask Technology to Reduce COVID-19 Transmission

口罩在保护公众免受COVID-19传播风险方面发挥着至关重要的作用。不幸的是，口罩要么是无效的，要么是复杂而昂贵的物品，只适合在医院使用。尽管如果有效，它们明显有可能降低传播率，但有限的证据表明它们对一般公众有效。目前的消费者口罩效果不佳的一个关键原因是它们无法激活病毒，也无法防止液滴在织物中积聚——这主要是由于目前的制造材料。该项目的目的是证明织物双面涂层的有效性，该涂层可以设计出简单、低成本的单层口罩，从而减少COVID-19等病毒的传播。我们确定的涂层旨在为单一织物提供防水和抗病毒功能；使低成本单层口罩能够大规模生产。目前还没有替代技术能够提供方便的单道双面涂层织物。预计全球需求将很高且快速增长，为应对当前的COVID-19大流行，每天至少迫切需要2000万个口罩。我们已经成功地证明了在各种口罩织物上沉积抗病毒/防水功能，这已被证明对致病菌和病毒有效。这种“影响扩展”将用于展示我们的涂层技术在医疗产品和运动服装面料上提供抗病毒功能的潜力。这两种重要的产品类别用于病毒传播风险高的环境，抗病毒涂层可以在减少致病性物种（如导致Covid-19的SARS-CoV-2病毒）的传播方面发挥关键作用。此外，该项目的扩展显著增加了Novara技术的潜在市场，并增加了该项目的商业潜力。

Facemasks play an essential role in protecting the public from the risks of COVID-19 transmission. Unfortunately, facemasks are either ineffective or complex and expensive items that are only suitable for use in a hospital. There is limited evidence that they are effective for use by the general public, despite the obvious potential to reduce transmission rates if effective. A key reason that current consumer facemasks are ineffective is their inability in activate viruses and prevent the build-up of liquid droplets in the fabric - which is primarily due to the current materials of construction.The aim of this project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a two-sided coating for fabrics that can enable design of simple, low-cost, single layer facemasks that reduces the transmission of viruses such as COVID-19\.The coatings we have identified are designed to provide water-resistance and anti-viral functionalities to a single fabric; enabling low-cost single-layer facemasks to be produced at scale. There are currently no alternative technologies that are able to deliver convenient single-pass two-sided coating of fabrics. The global demand is expected to be high and rapidly growing, with an urgent need for at least 20 million masks per day to address the current COVID-19 pandemic .We have successfully demonstrated the deposition of antiviral/water-resistant functionalities on various fabrics for facemasks and this has been proven effective against pathogenic bacteria and viruses. This “extension for impact” will be used to demonstrate the potential of our coating technology to deliver antiviral functionality to fabrics for medical products and sportswear. These two important product categories are used in environments where the risk for viral transmission are high and antiviral coatings can play a key role in reducing the spread of pathogenic species, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19. Furthermore, this project extension significantly increases the addressable market for our Novara technology and increases the commercial potential of the project.