RAPID: On-mask Chemical Modulation of Respiratory Droplets

Mathematical and Physical Sciences - NON-TECHNICAL ABSTRACT:

Spread of infectious respiratory diseases, such as influenza, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, usually starts from virion-laden respiratory droplets, which are released by an infected person during coughing or sneezing. Most of the droplets end up depositing on various surfaces such as doorknobs, tabletops, buttons, handrails, and touchscreens, turning them into potentially infectious objects. For infection to occur, these virions must remain active when they are picked up by another person, often through direct contact by hands, and then transferred to mouth, nose and eyes. Direct transport of virus-laden droplets and nuclei to the respiratory tract is also possible through inhaling within close proximity to the source. Therefore, to slow down or even prevent virus spread, it would be desirable to greatly reduce the number and activity of the virions in those just-released respiratory droplets. This RAPID award, which is supported by the Solid State and Materials Chemistry Program in the Division of Materials Research, explores chemical modulation strategies for deactivating virions in the respiratory fluid droplets passing through a medical mask. This can reduce the number of active virions at the very source of their spread pathways, the cough. The project also helps to seed an effort to rally researchers in physical sciences and engineering to study the problems, develop new hypotheses, create user-centered solutions and educate the general public, to address the many challenges associated with the transmission and spread of infectious respiratory diseases.

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT:

Facial masks are often required for patients to block and absorb large respiratory fluid droplets, and to reroute those smaller escaping droplets to reduce their forward travelling distance. It would be desirable to develop drop-in strategies to add anti-viral functions to the disposable masks used by patients. This RAPID project, which is supported by the Solid State and Materials Chemistry Program in the Division of Materials Research, develops such an on-mask, chemical modulation strategy that focuses on altering the chemical composition of the escaped respiratory droplets to deactivate virions. The starting model system is a chemical modifier based on a conducting polymer. The polymer is doped with chemical agents that are known to generate harsh micro-environment to deactivate virions. The dopants can readily dissolve in warm respiratory fluid droplets during exhalation, but they do not vaporize in the incoming stream of colder and drier air during inhalation. Such an on-mask chemical modulation strategy adds chemical sanitization function to common medical masks for reducing the viability of virions. Since this drop-in chemical modulation is applied at the very beginning of the chain events of virus transmission, it is effective for all potential transmission pathways. Additionally, through this award stronger connections between biological/medical research and physical sciences/engineering are established and serve to inspire new hypotheses, questions and ideas that drive innovations to address the challenges associated with the transmission and spread of infectious respiratory diseases. A significant effort of this RAPID project is used to achieve this goal, so that the physical sciences and engineering communities can be better informed, educated and prepared to work with biological and medical researchers to create solutions, and join them in the educational outreach activities for the general public.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.