Fabrication of Antimicrobial Textiles by Roll-to-Roll Electroless Plating

Recent technological advancements in textile manufacturing has focused on the production of various functional and smart textiles, among which antimicrobial textiles have found a niche. Textiles are often substrates susceptible to microbial growth under appropriate temperature, humidity, and nutrient conditions. Therefore, antimicrobial textiles have become a necessity, especially for critical applications such as personal protective equipment or PPE, sportwear and air filters. However, current antimicrobial agents and manufacturing technologies suffer from one or more key limitations, for example, low antimicrobial activity, poor durability, and lack of manufacturing scalability. This grant supports fundamental research to bridge the knowledge gap in scalable manufacturing of novel antimicrobial textiles with high activity and durability. This project establishes a new paradigm for the economical production of antimicrobial personal protective equipment and air filters in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and future public health crises. This project provides transferable knowledge for the manufacturing of other functional textiles. The results from this project promote the progress of science and benefit the U.S. textile industry, economy, national health and welfare. Furthermore, this multidisciplinary project involves material science, chemistry, nanotechnology and manufacturing science and provides research opportunities for women and underrepresented minority students. The integrated education and outreach activities promote engineering education for K-12, undergraduate and graduate students.

Silver nanoparticles have been researched as promising antimicrobial agents for protective textile applications. However, to realize practical low-cost and large-scale manufacturing of silver nanoparticle-functionalized textiles, fundamental understanding is still lacking on a series of key factors, including the heterogeneous interactions between the nanoparticle and fabrics, the engineering of the nanoparticle properties, and the manufacturing process that allows for mass production. To gain such basic knowledge, this project performs fundamental investigations into a continuous and scalable production process toward the manufacturing of silver nanoparticle-decorated textiles, by integrating electroless plating of silver nanoparticles with roll-to-roll manufacturing. The research generates new knowledge in (1) interfacial nucleation of silver nanoparticles assisted with biocompatible molecules such as polydopamine, which functions as an adhesive and reducing agent to facilitate the growth of the silver nanoparticles during electroless plating on different textile surfaces; (2) the growth mechanisms of silver nanoparticles on textiles for optimized antimicrobial potency; and (3) how fabric materials and structures impact the roll-to-roll coating quality. Research tasks involve systematic design of experiments for process construction, crystal growth analysis, materials synthesis and characterization, and antimicrobial performance testing.

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.