Research Centre for Nano-Materials and Energy Technology (RCNMET), School of Science and Technology, Sunway University, No. 5, Jalan Universiti

Abstract

Disease epidemics may spread quickly and easily throughout nations and continents in our current global environment, having a devastating effect on public health and the world economy. There are over 513 million people worldwide have been infected and more than 6.2 million have died due to SARS-CoV-2. There are treatments but no cures for most viruses. Nevertheless, the spread of viruses can be limited by introducing antiviral coatings on public area surfaces and personal protective equipment (e.g., face masks). This work aims to fabricate a polymer-based coating with acrylic resin as a binder that possesses great antiviral activity against the Feline coronavirus (FCov). The chosen polymer Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is used as an antiviral agent because it contains “green” chemistry benefits such as non-toxicity, inexpensive, readily recyclable, safe, natural, non-flammable, biocompatible, and biodegradable. The PEG/acrylic coating systems of different weight percentages were coated on the glass substrates by spray-coating method and cured at room temperature for 24 hours. The developed PEG/acrylic coating system that contains 20 wt% of PEG exhibits the highest anti-viral activities, 99.9% against FCov compared to the other weight percentages. From this study, it has been observed that hydrophilicity of the coating plays an important role in the antiviral activity. The developed coating has the hydrophilic property in which the contact angle was measured at 83.28 ± 0.5°. The FTIR reveals that there are no any existing toxic components or new components contained in the coating samples.