Reusable MoS 2 -Modified Antibacterial Fabrics with Photothermal Disinfection Properties for Repurposing of Personal Protective Masks

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces 2021-03, Vol.13 (11), p.12912-12927
• Main Authors: Kumar, Praveen, Roy, Shounak, Sarkar, Ankita, Jaiswal, Amit
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anti-Infective Agents - chemistry; Anti-Infective Agents - pharmacology; COVID-19 - prevention & control; COVID-19 - virology; Disulfides - chemistry; Escherichia coli - drug effects; Escherichia coli - metabolism; Glutathione - chemistry; Humans; Molybdenum - chemistry; Nanostructures - chemistry; Nanostructures - toxicity; Oxidation-Reduction; Particle Size; Personal Protective Equipment; Reactive Oxygen Species - metabolism; Recycling; SARS-CoV-2 - isolation & purification; Staphylococcus aureus - drug effects; Staphylococcus aureus - metabolism; Sunlight; Temperature
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c00083

The current pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has seen a widespread use of personal protective equipment, especially face masks. This has created the need to develop better and reusable protective masks with built-in antimicrobial, self-cleaning, and aerosol filtration properties to prevent the transmission of air-borne pathogens such as the coronaviruses. Herein, molybdenum disulfide (MoS ) nanosheets are used to prepare modified polycotton fabrics having excellent antibacterial activity and photothermal properties. Upon sunlight irradiation, the nanosheet-modified fabrics rapidly increased the surface temperature to ∼77 °C, making them ideal for sunlight-mediated self-disinfection. Complete self-disinfection of the nanosheet-modified fabric was achieved within 3 min of irradiation, making the fabrics favorably reusable upon self-disinfection. The nanosheet-modified fabrics maintained the antibacterial efficiency even after 60 washing cycles. Furthermore, the particle filtration efficiency of three-layered surgical masks was found to be significantly improved through incorporation of the MoS -modified fabric as an additional layer of protective clothing, without compromising the breathability of the masks. The repurposed surgical masks could filter out around 97% of 200 nm particles and 96% of 100 nm particles, thus making them potentially useful for preventing the spread of coronaviruses (120 nm) by trapping them along with antibacterial protection against other airborne pathogens.