He Fengjie, Zhang Jiongyu, Zhai Shengjie, Liu Changchun, Zhao Hui
Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, US.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut Health Center, CT, US.
Adv Eng Mater. 2025 Jul;27(13). doi: 10.1002/adem.202402919.
Highly contagious respiratory infection diseases such as COVID-19 can be transmitted by inhaling virus laden liquid droplets and short-range aerosols, released by an infected person. Particularly, in hospitals, spraying of the respiratory droplets containing pathogens from the conjunctiva or mucus of a susceptible person plays a key role in transferring the infectious diseases. N95 filtering respirators are a critical personal protective equipment. However, due to concerns over the virus accumulation on the N95 respirators, there is an urgent need to make the N95 respirators less contaminated. To address this critical issue, we develop a one-step spray coating approach to coat the fluorinated graphene (FG) nanosheet onto the N95 respirators. The synergistic effect of FG nanosheet with a low surface energy and the increased surface roughness by FG on the respirator's surface makes it superhydrophobic. For respiratory droplets like saliva and mucus, the FG coated respirators also show excellent superhydrophobicity. Furthermore, the ability against virus accumulation on the FG coated respirators is tested by using the mucus droplets laden with SARS-CoV-2. The results show that FG coated respirators largely increase the virus repel efficiency even under multiple contacts and effectively reduce the virus accumulation.
像新冠病毒这样的高传染性呼吸道感染疾病可通过吸入感染者释放的携带病毒的液滴和短程气溶胶传播。特别是在医院，从易感者的结膜或黏液中喷出含有病原体的呼吸道飞沫在传染病传播中起关键作用。N95过滤式呼吸器是一种关键的个人防护装备。然而，由于担心病毒在N95呼吸器上积聚，迫切需要减少N95呼吸器的污染。为解决这一关键问题，我们开发了一种一步喷涂方法，将氟化石墨烯（FG）纳米片涂覆在N95呼吸器上。FG纳米片的低表面能与FG使呼吸器表面粗糙度增加的协同效应使其具有超疏水性。对于唾液和黏液等呼吸道飞沫，涂覆FG的呼吸器也表现出优异的超疏水性。此外，通过使用载有严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）的黏液滴来测试涂覆FG的呼吸器抵抗病毒积聚的能力。结果表明，即使在多次接触的情况下，涂覆FG的呼吸器也大大提高了病毒排斥效率，并有效减少了病毒积聚。
