An Anti-Infective Polymer Coating to Reduce Surface Transmission of Pathogens on Personal Protective Equipment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Face masks are vital in protecting individuals from respiratory viruses but can serve as a source of infection if improperly used or re-used. Herein, we report anti-infective polymer coatings comprised of anti-fouling poly(oligoethylene glycol methacrylate) (POEGMA) functionalized with hydrazide groups for promoting adhesion and a quaternary ammonium compound (QAC) and/or grafted ciprofloxacin as the anti-infective component. The polymers could be functionalized to the surface of spunbonded polypropylene used for face masks using a simple aqueous dip-coating process. The QAC-functionalized coatings demonstrated a 2.0 log reduction against Staphylococcus aureus , a 1.5 log reduction against Escherichia coli , and a 0.8 log reduction against Pseudomonas aeruginosa after five hours of contact time; combination coatings containing both QAC and ciprofloxacin enabled a 2.1 log reduction against S. aureus , a 4.1 log reduction against E. coli , and a 7.3 log reduction against P. aeruginosa. In parallel, the masks maintained their key mechanical properties as well as remained in full compliance with the ASTM standards for barrier face coverings in terms of breathability and particulate filtration efficacy. Thus, this coating strategy offers potential to reduce the risk of infection from mask wear or reuse. • Polymer coatings were designed for anti-bacterial activity on surgical masks. • Mask functionalization can be done continuously in <2 minutes via dip coating. • Demonstrated high efficacy against S. aureus , P. aeruginosa , and E. coli . • Mask samples maintained key wearability properties after coating.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".