Grant: Alliance Grants

Viruses are among the most harmful pathogens to the human population and are responsible for the death of millions of people every year. In 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China were identified as a novel beta coronavirus, and the disease it caused was termed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 has quickly evolved into a global pandemic in just over two months. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes that the world faces the most challenging crisis since World War II, confronting a pandemic threatening people in every country that probably has no parallel in the recent past. The COVID-19 transmission could be mitigable with physical and chemical sanitization, such as spraying or wiping. However, sanitization is labor- and materials-intensive, impractical for covering all exposed areas, and needs to be reapplied periodically. Therefore, it will be useful to develop the self-sanitizing surfaces that can slowly release disinfecting chemicals to mitigate fomite transmission. Such coatings should be durable against rubbing and washing, long-lasting, and nontoxic and should be easily applied on the surfaces of already-installed objects that people frequently touch. This project targets to explore multifunctional antibacterial and antiviral coating through an encapsulated alkaline solution incorporated in a superhydrophobic coating. This coating can effectively improve antibacterial/antiviral performance over the long term, can guarantee the suitable release of bactericide and virucidal agents over time, and can consequently strongly impair the risk of COVID-19 diseases.