Reusing Face Covering Masks: Probing the Impact of Heat Treatment.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in imminent shortages of personal protective equipment such as face masks. To address the shortage, new sterilization or decontamination procedures for masks are quickly being developed and employed. Dry heat and steam sterilization processes are easily scalable and allow treatment of large sample sizes, thus potentially presenting fast and efficient decontamination routes, which could significantly ease the rapidly increasing need for protective masks globally during a pandemic like COVID-19. In this study, a suite of structural and chemical characterization techniques, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), contact angle, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Raman were utilized to probe the heat treatment impact on com

SUBMITTER: Yan S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9284677 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature