Ag Nanoparticles-Decorated PVDF Nanofiber/Net Membranes with Enhanced Filtration and Antibacterial Efficiency for Personal Protective Equipment
Le Kang, Shushu Huang, Xiaohong Qin, Xiaoping Gao, Yuling Li, Xueping Zhang
Abstract
Medical protective masks with both high antibacterial activity and filtration efficiency have gained wide interest due to sporadic respiratory disease outbreaks. Previous studies have focused on improving a single function (antibacterial activity or filtration) of the mask performance. Herein, we developed silver nanoparticles-decorated PVDF membranes (AgNPs/PVDF) with both high antibacterial activity and filtration efficiency. Our results show that AgNPs/PVDF membranes have antibacterial efficiency of 99.98% and 99.86% against E. coli and S. aureus, respectively. The bacterial filtration efficiency is higher than 95%. PM 0.26 filtration efficiency can be maintained above 95% after continuous filtration for 144 min. Adding AgNPs also promotes distinct hierarchical structure formation, which could improveme the filtration efficiency. This study provides a new methodology to fabricate antibacterial membranes doped with metal nanoparticles with promising applications in personal protective equipment development.