Novel protective mask for medical staff

摘要

Laughter is the best medicine, according to medical research, but how can patients be expected to feel like smiling if the faces of the nursing staff and even their loved ones are covered with masks? This is why researchers from Empa, in St. Gallen, Switzerland and from the EPFL's EssentialTech program are currently developing the 'Hello Mask', which has an integrated transparent filter film. The researchers have been using a technique referred to as electrospinning to produce fine membranes with a pore size of around 100 nm, To filter out pathogens from the wearer's breath, however, the see-through film can only have very tiny pores, for example to protect patients with a weakened immune system from infections. At the same time, the mask also needs to keep germs out. Nursing staff and the loved ones of people suffering from highly contagious diseases such as Ebola want to treat patients more humanely without jeopardizing their own health. The challenge in producing one of these masks, however, is to enable sufficient air to flow through the close-meshed material of the mask. The materials researchers are currently analyzing which type of polymer fibers can be used to produce a film with maximum respiratory activity.