IIT Researchers Designing Cost-Effective Surgical Masks With Virucidal Coating

New Delhi: A team of scientists from IIT Kanpur is trying to develop a protective coating that will help in making medicated masks for battling COVID-19.

The coating will be a combination of common polymers containing anti-microbial properties and re-purposable anti-viral molecules and materials which will make it a cost-effective solution, according to an NDTV report.

The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), a statutory body under the Department of Science and Technology, is supporting the research.

Doctors, nurses and healthcare staff are in hospitals which are treating coronavirus patients face the risk of contamination. They will benefit immensely benefit once this cost-effective medicated masks are available in the market.

The researchers, who are from the department of chemistry, will be using polymers which can resist attachment of bacteria and virus. They will include an additional protection to the polymer coating using molecules that can destabilize and/or neutralize the coronavirus and other viruses like influenza.