Researchers at IIT Bombay designs a surface that makes coronavirus evaporate faster.
Nithya Satheesh
A good and much needed innovation by the researchers at IIT Bombay for fighting against Covid in the long term. Researchers at IIT Bombay proposed an antiviral design surface on which residue droplets carrying Sars-CoV-2 virus can evaporate faster than when it is present on the surface of a glass or a plastic. This new innovation can provide a safe environment and help minimize the spread of coronavirus via surface transmission.
According to WHO, when an infected person releases the liquid particles into the surrounding through cough or sneeze, it is the primary way to get nearby people infected and wearing masks can reduce it to some extent. But the disease can also be transmitted as fomite transmission i.e., via liquid droplets present on the surface of objects. As a solution for fomite transmission, IIT Bombay Researchers designed micro-texture on the surface for accelerating the evaporation of residual droplets. IIT-B researchers published their research paper named 'Designing anti-viral surface to suppress the spread of Covid-19' in the Physics of Fluids, a letter section of a peer reviewed journal AIP on Wednesday. Sanghamitro Chatterjee, Janani Sree Muralidharan, Amit Agrawal, and Rajneesh Bhardwaj are researchers from IIT Bombay who proposed this solution.
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As per report, 99.9% of the liquid droplet evaporates within a few minutes, but still a residual thin film layer that allows the virus to be alive is left behind. In case of glass, this film can last up to 4 days and in plastic or stainless steel, it can last up to 7 days. Some researchers from IIT-B had already shown in the past that the survival time of coronavirus is similar to the time taken for drying up the droplet along with the thin film on it. But in a study in February, they showed how the mass loss of residual droplets and the evaporation mechanism of a thin film is different for porous and non-porous surfaces.
The mechanism of the anti-viral surface design is similar to a lotus leaf. In the case of lotus leaf, its surface has microscopic pillars which makes the water droplets roll-off. Likewise, the proposed antiviral surface has microscopic pillars on their surface. In terms of physics, it enhances the solid-liquid interfacial energy. The pressure inside the film increases and makes it to dry up fast.
As per their research, the surface with the taller and closely packed pillars and with a contact angle around 60 degree has the shortest time for the virus to die i.e., the strongest antiviral effect. Thus, this innovation can be useful in designing medical equipment, surfaces that are frequently touched such as door handles, smartphones etc..