Ma Yue, Wisuthiphaet Nicharee, Bolt Hunter, Nitin Nitin, Zhao Qinghua, Wang Dong, Pourdeyhimi Behnam, Grondin Pierre, Sun Gang
Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of California, One Shields Ave, Davis, California 95616, United States.
Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, United States.
ACS Biomater Sci Eng. 2021 Jun 14;7(6):2329-2336. doi: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.1c00117. Epub 2021 Apr 14.
Embedding medical and hygiene products with regenerable antimicrobial functions would have significant implications for limiting pathogen contaminations and reducing healthcare-associated infections. Herein, we demonstrate a scalable and industrially feasible methodology to fabricate chlorine rechargeable melt-blown polypropylene (PP) nonwoven fabrics, which have been widely used in hygienic and personal protective products, via a combination of a melt reactive extrusion process and melt-blown technique. Methacrylamide (MAM) was employed as a precursor of halamine monomers and covalently grafted onto the PP backbone to form polypropylene-grafted methacrylamide (PP-g-MAM), which could be chlorinated, yielding biocidal acyclic halamines. Subsequently, the resultant PP-g-MAM was manufactured into nonwoven fabrics with varying fiber diameters by adjusting the hot air flowing speed during the melt-blowing process. The chlorinated nonwoven fabrics (PP-g-MAM-Cl) exhibited integrated properties such as a robust mechanical property, good thermal stability, high chlorination capability (>850 ppm), and desirable chlorine rechargeability. More importantly, such chlorinated nonwoven fabrics showed a promising antibacterial and antiviral efficiency, achieving 6 log CFU reduction of bacteria (both and ) and 7 log PFU reductions of a virus (T7 bacteriophages) within 15 and 5 min of contact, respectively, revealing great potential to serve as a reusable antimicrobial material for medical protection applications.
赋予医疗和卫生产品可再生抗菌功能对于限制病原体污染和减少医疗相关感染具有重要意义。在此，我们展示了一种可扩展且在工业上可行的方法，通过熔融反应挤出工艺和熔喷技术相结合，制造出可氯再充电的熔喷聚丙烯（PP）无纺布，这种无纺布已广泛应用于卫生和个人防护产品。甲基丙烯酰胺（MAM）被用作卤胺单体的前体，并共价接枝到PP主链上形成聚丙烯接枝甲基丙烯酰胺（PP-g-MAM），其可被氯化，生成具有杀菌作用的无环卤胺。随后，通过在熔喷过程中调节热空气流速，将所得的PP-g-MAM制成具有不同纤维直径的无纺布。氯化无纺布（PP-g-MAM-Cl）表现出综合性能，如强大的机械性能、良好的热稳定性、高氯化能力（>850 ppm）和理想的氯再充电性。更重要的是，这种氯化无纺布显示出有前景的抗菌和抗病毒效率，在接触15分钟和5分钟内分别实现了对细菌（ 和 ）6个对数级CFU的减少以及对病毒（T7噬菌体）7个对数级PFU的减少，揭示了其作为可重复使用的抗菌材料用于医疗防护应用的巨大潜力。
