COVID-19: antivirus materials and virus-detection device for aircraft cabin

新冠肺炎疫情使全球航空业陷入前所未有的危机。这场危机提出了一些技术挑战，特别是在保护消费者健康方面。抗菌涂层和病毒监测装置提供了一种解决方案。此次合作的目标是找到有效的方法来改善飞机客舱内的卫生条件。提出了两种方法。首先，将评估用于硬表面和纺织品的抗菌涂层。最近的研究表明，无论表面看起来脏还是干净，COVID-19都可以在表面上保持数小时到数天的传染性。由于在飞行服务期间对表面消毒是不可行的，一个更实际的解决方案是安装一个排斥病原体的表面，从而消除转移到人体和随后病毒传播的可能性。尽管有许多抗菌涂层可用，但没有一种经过COVID-19检测。利用动物冠状病毒，我们将评估现有涂层产品的抗病毒效果，并确定推荐应用于飞机内饰的最佳涂层。这项评估的结果将允许现有的飞机尽快重新投入使用。其次，我们提出了一种高灵敏度的拉曼分析仪，用于飞机机舱内的病毒检测。这种手持设备可以在几秒钟内获得结果，可以进行频繁的服务检查，以便在污染扩散到乘客和机组人员之前将其清除。这些技术降低了污染和疾病传播的风险，有助于恢复消费者对旅行的信心，从而支持航空业从COVID-19造成的衰退中复苏。

The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the global airline industry into an unprecedented crisis. This crisis raises a number of technical challenges, particularly in terms of safeguarding consumer health. Antimicrobial coating and virus monitoring devices provide a solution. The goal of this partnership is to find effective methods to improve hygiene conditions inside aircraft cabins. Two approaches are proposed. First, antimicrobial coatings for hard surfaces as well as textiles will be evaluated. Recent studies show COVID-19 can remain infectious on surfaces for several hours to days, irrespective of the surface looking dirty or clean. Since sanitizing surfaces during flight service is not feasible, a more practical solution is installing a surface that repels the pathogens, thus eliminating the possibilities of transfer to the human body and subsequent viral spread. Although many antimicrobial coatings are available, none of these have been test for COVID-19. Using animal coronavirus virus, we will assess the antiviral effect of existing coating products and identify the best one to be recommended to be applied to aircraft interiors. The outcome of this assessment will allow for existing aircraft to re-enter service as soon as possible. Secondly, we propose a highly sensitive Raman analyzer for virus inspection inside the aircraft cabin. This handheld device can obtain results in a couple of seconds, enabling frequent in-service inspection so that contamination can be cleaned before it spreads to passengers and crew. These techniques reduce the risk of contamination and disease spread, helps to restore consumer confidence in travel, and thus, supports the aviation industry to recover from the recession caused by COVID-19.