A Heat-Based Self-Decontaminating Textile Material for Wearables

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and strained medical supply chains due to the disposable nature of PPE, which creates a need for constant replenishment to cope with high-volume usage [1]. To address this increase in demand, and to reduce the amount of waste generated by disposable PPE, we developed a reusable textile-based composite material that relies on dry heat decontamination [2], enacted through Joule heating of a conductive textile, to inactivate pathogens.<br/><br/>This wearable material is composed of four layers adhered to each other through a stacked lamination fabrication process which has been implemented in prior work to fabricate similar layered textile-based wearable devices [3]. The four layers that comprise this material are: (i) a plain-woven substrate textile infused with thermoplastic polyurethane on one side, (ii) a serpentine-patterned electrically conductive textile that enables Joule heating, (iii) an electrically insulating dielectric surface layer of thermoplastic polyurethane to prevent electrical contact with the wearer, and (iv) a thermally insulating base textile layer that interfaces with the wearer’s skin to allow safe contact during the dry heat decontamination process. Through this facile and scalable fabrication approach, we created a wearable material capable of achieving the high surface temperatures (&gt; 100 °C) required for viral inactivation within short time frames (&lt; 5 s) while maintaining a comfortable temperature at the point of contact with the skin (&lt; 30 °C).<br/><br/>The geometrical parameters of this material dictate its thermal performance for the inactivation of viral contaminants and can be predetermined, prior to fabrication, based on a desired level of virus inactivation. We quantified the inactivation efficacy of our composite material through experiments supported by analytical modeling predictions using a time-varying temperature profile [4], illustrating the effectiveness and practicality of our approach. We demonstrate how this material can be easily integrated into regular clothing (shown using gloves in this work) and can perform rapid dry heat decontamination, especially in untethered, on-the-go applications. This work provides a simple design and fabrication process for a composite textile material that enables quick and repeatable in situ dry heat decontamination with the ability to reduce waste created by disposable PPE and mitigate the risk of disruptions in supply chains.<br/><br/>[1] N. J. Rowan and J. G. Laffey, “Unlocking the surge in demand for personal and protective equipment (PPE) and improvised face coverings arising from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic – Implications for efficacy, re-use and sustainable waste management,” <i>Science of The Total Environment</i>, vol. 752, p. 142259, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142259.<br/>[2] T. F. Yap, Z. Liu, R. A. Shveda, and D. J. Preston, “A predictive model of the temperature-dependent inactivation of coronaviruses,” <i>Applied Physics Letters</i>, vol. 117, no. 6, p. 060601, Aug. 2020, doi: 10.1063/5.0020782.<br/>[3] V. Sanchez <i>et al.</i>, “Smart thermally actuating textiles,” <i>Advanced Materials Technologies</i>, vol. 5, no. 8, p. 2000383, Jul. 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202000383.<br/>[4] T. F. Yap, C. J. Decker, and D. J. Preston, “Effect of daily temperature fluctuations on virus lifetime,” <i>Science of The Total Environment</i>, vol. 789, p. 148004, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148004.