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Household Materials Selection for Homemade Cloth Face Coverings and Their Filtration Efficiency Enhancement with Triboelectric Charging
Open accessAbstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is currently causing a severe disruption and shortage in the global supply chain of necessary personal protective equipment (e.g., N95 respirators). The U.S. CDC has recommended use of household cloth by the general public to make cloth face coverings as a method of source control. We evaluated the filtration properties of natural and synthetic materials using a modified procedure for N95 respirator approval. Common fabrics of cotton, polyester, nylon, and silk had filtration efficiency of 5-25%, polypropylene spunbond had filtration efficiency 6-10%, and paper-based products had filtration efficiency of 10-20%. An advantage of polypropylene spunbond is that it can be simply triboelectrically charged to enhance the filtration efficiency (from 6 to >10%) without any increase in pressure (stable overnight and in humid environments). Using the filtration quality factor, fabric microstructure, and charging ability, we are able to provide an assessment of suggested fabric materials for homemade facial coverings.
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“N95 FFR are employed as personal protective equipment (PPE) and they provide a high level of protection for filtering facepiece masks that cover only the nose and mouth (as opposed to full and half-face respirators constructed from elastomeric materials) [3, 58–74].”
From The protective performance of reusable cloth face masks, disposable procedure masks, KN95 masks and N95 respirators: Filtration and total inward leakage (2021) · cites this paper as [61]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Zhao, M., Liao, L., Xiao, W., Yu, X., Wang, H., Wang, Q., Lin, Y. L., Kilinc-Balci, F. S., Price, A., Chu, L., Chu, M. C., Chu, S., & Cui, Y.
- Affiliations
- 4C Air (United States) (US)
- 4C Air, Inc., Sunnyvale, California 94089, United States
- World Health Organization (CH)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US)
- Stanford Medicine (US)
- Colorado School of Public Health (US)
- Stanford University (US)
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Cui, Yi
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nano Letters
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2020-06-02
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 5544-5552
- ISSN
- 1530-6984 (ISSN-L)
- 1530-6992
- PMC
- PMC10760933
- OpenAlex
- W3029827942
- Cited by
- 266
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 40 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 99 · 2020: 35
- FWCI
- 31.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Nano Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- World Health Organization
- National Institutes of Health (CC999999)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Infection Control and Ventilation
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Aerosol Filtration and Electrostatic Precipitation
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Polymers and Plastics › Textile materials and evaluations
- Keywords
- filtration efficiency, triboelectric charging, cotton, polyesters, nylon, silk, COVID-19 personal protective equipment, source control, fabric microstructure
- MeSH terms
- Personal Protective Equipment, Betacoronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Aerosols, Air Microbiology, Electricity, Equipment Design, Filtration, Humans, Masks, Microscopy, Electron, Scanning, Particle Size, Pneumonia, Viral, Textiles, Coronavirus Infections, Nanotechnology, Nanostructures, Pandemics
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