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New Laser Treatment Makes Metal Surfaces Antimicrobial

Bacterial pathogens can live on surfaces for days. Purdue University  engineers are developing a laser treatment method that could potentially turn any metal surface into a bacteria-killer simply by giving the metal’s surface a different texture. The researchers are starting with copper. “Copper has been used as an antimicrobial material for centuries. But it typically takes hours for native copper surfaces to kill off bacteria,” said Purdue researcher Rahim Rahimi. “We developed a one-step laser-texturing technique that effectively enhances the bacteria-killing properties of copper’s surface.” The rugged texture increases surface area, allowing more opportunity for bacteria to hit the surface and rupture on the spot. The technique might also apply to metallic alloys that are known to have antimicrobial properties and has applications in medical device manufacturing. It is not yet modified to killing viruses like the one responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Topics:
Manufacturing & Prototyping Materials Medical Photonics

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    Transcript

    00:00:01 Antibiotic resistance is a big challenge right now. So they're superbugs and bugs are becoming more aggressive. Antibiotics are not effective on them. We're developing a technology that allows us to modify the surfaces of metals by laser surface modification to enhance the antimicrobial properties. Copper has been known to have good antimicrobial properties but by itself we noticed that copper takes a long time to have an effect on bacteria

    00:00:32 to make it basically kill the bacteria. What we're doing with the laser, we're creating nanotextured surfaces, making them super hydrophilic with nano roughness which will enhance the surface property of that copper orders of magnitude higher to enhance the overall antimicrobial properties of the copper surface. - How we test our material is we expose the bacterial culture on the surface

    00:00:59 and allow it in room temperature for around 90 minutes. So during this 90 minutes, we test the amount of bacteria present on the surface in regular time intervals. And we found that a surface that is laser treated has much more rapid killing of bacteria than the one without laser treatment. - Our tests have shown that it has a good enhancement in antimicrobial properties of both gram negative

    00:01:27 and gram positive bacteria. And even bacteria that are really aggressive for example, MRSA, which has been shown to be one of the really nasty bacterias with antibiotic resistance. The nice thing about our approaches is not something adding to the surface. So there's not any kind of additional material required. There's no antibiotics, or no spray coating. It's just modifying the native surface of that material,

    00:01:54 enhancing the antimicrobial properties of that surface. (upbeat music)