An Antimicrobial Polymer Brush Coating to Fabricate High-Performance, Durable, Self-Sterilization, and Recyclable Face Masks

The ubiquity of airborne germs poses a significant threat to human respiratory health, as demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and since the outbreak of COVID-19, masks have become a necessity. However, commercially available masks only act as a physical barrier and do not effectively kill the germs. Therefore, the wearer of these masks becomes susceptible to secondary infections and cross-infections. Moreover, the widespread use of disposable masks with short life spans has placed a heavy economic and environmental burden on the society. Herein, inspired by natural tomato trichomes, an on-demand, simple biomimetic strategy was developed to impart durability, prolonged service life, and antimicrobial and antiviral properties to commonly used masks using an antimicrobial polymer brush (PPDV) coating. The PPDV coating was designed to firmly adhere to the interfacial fibers of the masks (termed HPDV-masks), which aided in achieving outstanding bacterial inhibition rates (99.25%), preventing bacterial adhesion (88.36%), and killing virus within a short contact time of 3 min. Moreover, the PPDV coating could be readily used on a wide variety of commercially available masks to improve the filtration performance of bacterial aerosols and solid particles. Importantly, the HPDV masks were also highly durable and exhibited a long service life, retaining their filtration efficiency for airborne bacteria after 10 cycles of exposure and showing no deterioration in performance over 1 month. Therefore, the simple and sustainable strategy for fabrication of masks with multifunctional enhancements developed herein shows great potential and application prospects in improving the performances of personal protective equipment and preventing the spread of germs.