Powerful Air Filter Materials: Capture and Destroy

空气污染正在成为一个严重的健康问题，并在很大程度上影响我们的经济。由于室内空气质量往往比室外差，而且人类一生中80%的时间都是在室内度过的，因此提高室内空气质量水平具有极其重要的意义。空气过滤器是通过捕获和捕获室内化学污染物和病原体(如细菌和病毒)来减少它们的最常见方法，但它们中的大多数并不真正降解化学物质和灭活病原体。将纳米材料集成到当前的空气过滤技术中--开发纳米技术实现的空气过滤--是一种非常有希望的、通用的解决方案，可以一次捕获并进一步消灭所有这些有害物种。这在封闭空间中是极其重要的，例如飞机。Nanobbrand已经成功地制造了银(Ag)和金(Au)纳米颗粒，并探索了某些生物医学应用。它现在准备扩大这些纳米颗粒的生产，并在很大程度上将它们的应用扩展到环境部门。在此背景下，INRS和Nanobrand将密切合作，结合各自的专业知识和优势，开发先进的、集成了金属纳米颗粒的空气过滤器纳米材料，这种材料能够捕获和摧毁污染物和病原体。一旦成功，它将使Nanobrand能够创造其下一代产品，这将很好地补充公司的产品组合，并在很大程度上拓宽其市场。它还将为魁北克和加拿大带来巨大的健康和社会经济利益，并有助于高素质人才(HQP)的培训。

Air pollution is becoming a serious health concern and also largely affects our economy. Since indoor air quality is often worse than outdoors and human beings typically spend >80% of their lifetime indoors, improving indoor air quality level is of extremely high importance. Air filters act as the most common way to reduce indoor chemical pollutants and pathogens (such as bacteria and viruses) by capturing and trapping them, but most of them do not really degrade chemicals and inactivate pathogens. Integrating nanomaterials into current air filtering technology -developing nanotechnology enabled air filtering- represents a very promising, universal solution to capture and further, destroy all these harmful species at once. This is extremely important in closed space, such as airplanes. Nanobrand has successfully manufactured silver (Ag) and gold (Au) nanoparticles and explored certain biomedical applications. It is now poised to scale up the production of these nanoparticles and largely extend their application to the environmental sector. In this context, INRS and Nanobrand will closely collaborate and combine their respective expertise and strengths to develop advanced, metal nanoparticles-integrated air filter nanomaterials, which are capable of both capturing and destroying pollutants and pathogens. Once successful, it will allow Nanobrand to create its next generation of products, which will complement nicely the company portfolio and largely broaden its market. It will also bring huge health and socio-economic benefits to Quebec and Canada, and contribute to the training of highly qualified personnel (HQP) as well.