Design, characterize and validate a new multifunctional coating, with antiviral and antibacterial properties for COVID-19 pandemic

病毒是对人类人口危害最大的病原体之一，每年导致数百万人死亡。2019年，湖北省武汉市肺炎聚集性病例中国被鉴定为一种新型贝塔冠状病毒，其引起的疾病被命名为冠状病毒病2019(新冠肺炎)。在短短两个多月的时间里，新冠肺炎迅速演变为一场全球大流行。联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯认为，世界面临着二战以来最具挑战性的危机，面临着一场威胁着每个国家人民的大流行，这可能是近年来从未有过的。新冠肺炎的传播可以通过喷雾或擦拭等物理和化学消毒措施来缓解。然而，消毒是劳力和材料密集型的，要覆盖所有暴露的区域是不切实际的，需要定期重新应用。因此，开发能够缓慢释放消毒化学物质以减少细菌传播的自消毒表面将是有用的。这种涂层应经久耐用、耐磨、耐洗、持久、无毒，并应容易地涂抹在人们经常触摸的已安装物体的表面。 本项目的目标是探索多功能抗菌和抗病毒涂层，通过在超疏水涂层中加入封装的碱性溶液。这种涂层可以有效地提高长期的抗菌/抗病毒性能，可以保证杀菌剂和杀病毒剂随着时间的推移得到适当的释放，因此可以极大地降低患新冠肺炎疾病的风险。

Viruses are among the most harmful pathogens to the human population and are responsible for the death of millions of people every year. In 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China were identified as a novel beta coronavirus, and the disease it caused was termed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 has quickly evolved into a global pandemic in just over two months. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes that the world faces the most challenging crisis since World War II, confronting a pandemic threatening people in every country that probably has no parallel in the recent past. The COVID-19 transmission could be mitigable with physical and chemical sanitization, such as spraying or wiping. However, sanitization is labor- and materials-intensive, impractical for covering all exposed areas, and needs to be reapplied periodically. Therefore, it will be useful to develop the self-sanitizing surfaces that can slowly release disinfecting chemicals to mitigate fomite transmission. Such coatings should be durable against rubbing and washing, long-lasting, and nontoxic and should be easily applied on the surfaces of already-installed objects that people frequently touch. This project targets to explore multifunctional antibacterial and antiviral coating through an encapsulated alkaline solution incorporated in a superhydrophobic coating. This coating can effectively improve antibacterial/antiviral performance over the long term, can guarantee the suitable release of bactericide and virucidal agents over time, and can consequently strongly impair the risk of COVID-19 diseases.