Self-sterilization and self-powered real-time respiratory monitoring of reusable masks engineered by bioinspired coatings

Abstract

Surgical masks are crucial personal protective equipment to prevent and suppress the transmission of highly infectious viruses, especially suffered from some pandemic outbreaks. However, due to the lack of sterilization functions, the long-term reused masks become the hotbed of microorganisms and further cause additional damages to human health. Furthermore, it is desirable to endow multifunctionalities to the masks, such as self-powered real-time respiratory monitoring to forecast breath-related diseases. Although many efforts have been made towards those requirements, the complicated surface engineering process and involved extra weight of these mask still brought adverse effects in high respiratory resistance and poor wearing comfortability. In this work, we reported a facile fabrication strategy towards multifunctional masks based on the surface modification of melt-blown cloth by two kinds of bioinspired coatings. After sequentially performed mussel-inspired polydopamine coating and metal-phenolic network (Fe3+ and gallic acid) coatings, the obtained masks not only maintained the features of light, flexibility, breathability and filterability, but also realized the self-sterilization under the sunlight irradiation, thus allowing the facile reutilization for many times. Moreover, benefiting from the wet electricity generated by carboxyl group of gallic acid, the modified mask could effectively monitor the different respiratory status in real time. It was anticipated that this work can provide a new strategy towards the multifunctional integration of next-generation masks.