How Nanomaterials Lead to Antimicrobial Surfaces

A team at Loughborough University is harnessing nanomaterials to develop next-generation functional paints and coatings to reduce bacteria and virus transmission. Watch this video to learn about the novel platform technology.

“We hope that one day our coatings will be applied as standard to a range of everyday products – providing a variety of built-in capabilities and features like anti-bacterial, self-cleaning, optical and anti-corrosive properties," Dr. Martin-Fabiani says  .

Transcript

00:00:02 when bacteria land on a Surface they grow and multiply clamping together and forming a continuous layer which is difficult to remove if we touch that layer we pick up some of those bacteria and then we pass them on when we touch something else maybe touching our mouth or touching another surface this is a big problem in places where we need to prevent the transfer of bacteria such as

00:00:25 hospitals or food factories regular cleaning helps reduce the problem so we wash our hands we wash the equipment we use but there's still a big infection risk with high touch surfaces that don't get cleaned all the time like switches door handles and hospital bed rails we're working on new ways to create antimicrobial surfaces that kill bacteria before they can grow

00:00:50 and spread we're creating new Coatings for surfaces which put bacteria into contact with tiny particles with antibacterial properties this part iOS can kill bacteria in different ways such as breaking up the cell walls or disrupting their metabolism the key concept we're working on is how to make sure these nanop particles end up on the outer surface of the coatin as it dries

00:01:15 to maximize its efficiency in a conventional coating there are particles of different sizes in the solution that is painted or sprayed onto a surface and when this dries these particles are all mixed up randomly so if we add a our antibacterial nanoparticles to a conventional formulation they would get mixed in as the COA dries with most of

00:01:37 the nanoparticles sitting below the outer surface bacteria are more likely to grow and multiply in our Coatings particles are ranged themselves by size as the coating dries so that the tiny antibacterial nanoparticles are at the top surface this creates an effective antimicrobial surface bacteria that land on the coatin are killed by the nanoparticles so by

00:02:01 applying our Coatings to high touch surfaces we will help to stop the spread of [Music] infection