Optimizing antimicrobial surface properties

铜及其合金已显示出作为医院和其他临床环境中使用的抗菌表面的重要前景。使用这些表面可以帮助减少医院中的感染传播，即所谓的医院获得性感染或医疗获得性感染。我们之前的工作证实，Aereus Techologies的热喷涂铜合金涂层具有良好的抗菌性能，并且能够很好地抵抗清洁和消毒化学品。值得注意的是，热喷涂涂层具有比具有相同化学组成的材料（未热喷涂）好得多的抗微生物性能，这使得我们怀疑除了铜的存在之外，抗微生物活性还与涂层的微观特征有关。

Copper and its alloys have shown significant promise as antimicrobial surfaces for use in hospitals and other clinical settings. Use of these surfaces may help reduce the transmission of infections in hospitals, so-called nosocomial or healthcare acquired infections. Our previous work confirmed that Aereus Techologies' thermally-sprayed copper alloy coating has good antimicrobial properties, and stands up well to cleaning and disinfection chemicals. It was noted that the thermally-sprayed coating has much better antimicrobial properties than material with the same chemical composition (which was not thermally sprayed), leading us to suspect that the antimicrobial activity is also related to microscopic features of the coating, in addition to the presence of copper.