A thin plastic film that rips apart viruses? What’s not to like!
Despite expressing misgivings about the unfettered use of AI in healthcare settings, your Back Page scrawler is by no means a hardcore luddite.
On the contrary, we have a resolute faith in the capacity and ingenuity of humanity to overcome our self-inflicted challenges that borders on the naïve.
Perhaps it’s because we are old enough to have somehow lived through the numerous doomsday scenarios of the 1970s and 1980s. (Trust me, youngsters, there were plenty.)
Or maybe it’s because every so often we come across developments that make us go: “Wow! That’s really, really clever. There’s hope for us yet!”
Take, for example, this research by boffins at our own RMIT University, published recently in Advanced Science.
As someone who is more afraid of being laid waste by a nasty virus than an apocalyptic catastrophe, we are delighted to learn that the folks at RMIT have developed a more effective way of keeping high‑touch surfaces such as smartphones and hospital equipment from spreading disease.
What they have come up with is an ultra-thin plastic film that literally tears apart any viruses that come in contact with it, rendering the rotten wee buggers incapable of sharing around their misery.
What’s more, according to the researchers, this fantastic plastic is not only effective at killing viruses, it is also “far more practical and scalable” to produce than earlier metal and silicon-based antiviral surfaces. And by that they mean their product is a “cheap, flexible plastic that can be made in big factory rolls” rather like cling wrap.
So how does it work?
According to a media release from RMIT this week, the flexible acrylic surface is “textured with ultra‑fine structures called nanopillars that grab and stretch the outer shell of the virus so much that it ruptures, killing the virus through mechanical force rather than chemical disinfectants”.
The research team said that in laboratory tests using the human parainfluenza virus 3 (hPIV-3), about 94% of the virus particles were either “ripped apart or damaged to the point where they could no longer replicate to cause infection” within one hour of contact with the surface.
“As nanofabrication tools get better, our results give a clearer guide to which nanopatterns work best to kill viruses,” study lead author Samson Mah told media.
“By tweaking the spacing and height of the nanopillars, we discovered how tightly they are packed together is far more important than how tall they are for breaking viruses apart,” he said.
“We could one day have surfaces like phone screens, keyboards and hospital tables covered with this film, killing viruses on contact without using harsh chemicals.”
Certainly sounds a more sensible plan than spraying beaches with disinfectant or injecting bleach for combatting our next viral pandemic threat, but I wouldn’t be throwing away the N95 face masks any time soon.
Share your bug-busting story tips with Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
