Abstract

Air filtration materials such as protective masks can protect humans from airborne pathogens; however, most of the existing protective filtration materials are aimed to intercept bacteria. Therefore, in this work, modified polypropylene- (PP-) based melt-blown nonwovens with antibacterial property were prepared for reducing the infection rate during the filtering process. Firstly, an N-halamine precursor, 2,4-diamino-6-diallylamino-1,3,5-triazine (NDAM) monomer, was grafted with PP polymers (PP-g-NDAM) by reactive extrusion method, and the grafting effect was confirmed by nitrogen analysis and FTIR spectra. Then, the obtained PP-g-NDAM was mixed with pristine PP resins in different ratios to prepare the filter materials by melt-blown technology. Finally, the new PP-g-NDAM melt-blown filter materials were finishing treated by the chlorination and electrostatic process, which showed a high filtration efficiency with low pressure drop and a potent antibacterial effect against Escherichia coli (E. coli). This work provides an innovative method for manufacturing antibacterial filtration nonwovens, which can improve the quality of conventional filtration products.

Highlights

  • Human beings unavoidably expose themselves to airborne pathogens in daily lives; it is noted that the pathogens will propagate and spread in conditions of suitable temperature and humidity, which poses a serious risk of respiratory disease to human health

  • Most of the fiber-based filters only focused on particulate matter (PM) removal, and the majority of pathogens are controlled by the retention on the fiber surface, instead of cleaning them out, resulting in a potential health concern of the secondary infection. erefore, there is an urgent requirement for fabricating multifunctional filter materials with antibacterial and air filtration properties, which could improve the protective effect

  • A similar trend is found for other weight variations of DCP (i.e., 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7 g). at is because when the content of DCP was constant, the amount of initial free radicals generated by thermal decomposition was relatively fixed, and increasing the NDAM content could enhance the reaction between NDAM monomer and PP macromolecular radicals, resulting in the increasing grafting degree (GD) and grafting efficiency (GE) values of NDAM

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Summary

Introduction

Human beings unavoidably expose themselves to airborne pathogens in daily lives; it is noted that the pathogens will propagate and spread in conditions of suitable temperature and humidity, which poses a serious risk of respiratory disease to human health. At present, using air filtration media is the most effective way to protect people from the influences of airborne pathogens. Erefore, there is an urgent requirement for fabricating multifunctional filter materials with antibacterial and air filtration properties, which could improve the protective effect. Researchers have used the methods of surface grafting [1,2,3] or surface coating [4] of antimicrobial agents onto PP polymer materials to achieve antibacterial functions, with limited durability and applications. To solve the problem mentioned above, N-halamines [8,9,10,11,12] were selected as an ideal antibacterial agent to modify PP polymers, which has advantages of broad-spectrum and long-term sterilization activity, durable, regenerable, stability, safe to human, and environmental friendly [13, 14]. Sun et al [15,16,17,18] have

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