A member of the research team wears the prototype of disposable face masks invented from autolytic piezoelectric polymer sheet (Photo: vietnamnet.vn) Award winning Nguyen Duc Thanh, 37, and hisresearch team, Nguyen Lab, used autolytic piezoelectric polymer sheets, whichhas been studied by themselves and applied in organ transplantation since 2018,to make a special type of face mask.
The invention was launched to meet the urgent needin the US last year.
Most medical masks are made of synthetic polymerssimilar to plastic bags which are unable to self dispose and pose a majorhazard to the environment. Medical masks are unable to prevent bacteria,viruses and fine dust like KN95 or N95 masks. Meanwhile, N95 masks are veryexpensive and can be used only one time, Dr Thanh said.
Thanh’s team came up with the idea of using theautolytic piezoelectric polymer sheets that can filter the dust as effectivelyas N95 but can be reused after sterilising by autoclave or ultrasound. It isdisposable after several years.
Although the sheet has been applied in manymedical products, this was the first time it has been used filtering dust,viruses and bacteria.
Thanh said what made his masks different fromothers was the piezoelectric effect of the nano film. The film can create asmall voltage layer when there is air flow (from breathing, sneezing orcoughing).
The voltage creates an invisible protection layer,preventing the penetration of charged droplets of water bringing viruses andbacteria.
“The polymer nano film’s filtering capacity isalmost as much as N95 and higher than normal medical face masks,” he said.
The team is doing further research and packagingthe product and plans to launch a start-up to bring the face masks to themarket.
“It is expected that the face masks will be usedwidely in one to two years time,” Thanh told vietnamnet.vn.
After sterilisation or disinfection using hightemperatures and pressure or ultrasonic vibrations, the piezoelectricity won’tbe lost.
"This feature allows the masks to be reusedfor many times," he added.
Thanh’s research team is also studying a vaccinepatch that can be applied to skin that helps deliver COVID-19 vaccines into thehuman body without infections from medical workers.
The patch, like urgo patches, is expected todistribute the vaccine to the community so quickly that people no longer haveto visit medical facilities during the lockdown.
The research has been published in the medicaljournal Nature Biomedical Engineering and attracted the attention ofinternational scientists.
“I believe that the pandemic will soon be wipedout globally thanks to great medical achievements like COVID-19 vaccine andpublic awareness of wearing face masks," Thanh said.
"I hope that I will be able to make acontribution to that effort.”
Dr Thanh graduated from the Hanoi University ofTechnology and received a PhD scholarship from the Vietnam-US Education Fund in2008. He completed his doctoral thesis in 2013 at the Princeton University.
After that, he worked at Massachusetts Instituteof Technology and was appointed by Connecticut University as the assistantprofessor, lecturer of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty ofBiomedical Engineering.
Thanh is leading a research group in biomedicaltechnology and biomedical materials at the university. The team conductsmultidisciplinary research, focusing on medical applications, related to a widerange of fields including biomaterials, pharmaceuticals, vaccines,nanotechnology, regenerative medicine and engineering, and medical electronics.
Thanh has received a number of prestigious awards,including the National Institutes of Health’s Trailblazer Award for Young andEarly Investigator in 2017, 2018 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing EngineerAward, top 10 inventors under 35 years old in the Asia-Pacific region voted byMIT, top 10 exemplary young Vietnamese faces in 2019./.
VNA
