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重要作用。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。有有限的证据表明，它们对公众的使用是有效的，尽管如果有效的话，显然有可能降低传播率。目前的消费者口罩无效的一个关键原因是它们不能激活病毒并防止液体滴在织物中积聚-这主要是由于当前的构造材料。该项目的目的是证明织物双面涂层的有效性，该涂层可以设计简单，低成本，减少病毒传播的单层口罩，如COVID-19。我们已经确定的涂层旨在为单一织物提供防水和抗病毒功能;使低成本的单层口罩能够大规模生产。目前没有能够提供织物的方便的单程双面涂覆的替代技术。我们已成功展示在各种口罩面料上沉积抗病毒╱防水功能，并已证明可有效对抗致病细菌及病毒。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织物中提供抗病毒功能的潜力。这两个重要的产品类别用于病毒传播风险高的环境中，抗病毒涂层可以在减少致病物种（如导致Covid-19的SARS-CoV-2病毒）传播方面发挥关键作用。此外，该项目的延期大大增加了我们诺瓦拉技术的可寻址市场，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.