Liquid gallium adheres to fabric and kills pathogens

Developed by an international team of researchers, the coating adheres more strongly to fabric than some conventional metal coatings.

“Microbes can survive on the fabrics hospitals use for bedding, clothing and face masks for a long time,” said Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and Camille & Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University (NC State). “Metallic surface coatings such as copper or silver are an effective way to eradicate these pathogens, but many metal particle coating technologies have issues such as non-uniformity, processing complexity, or poor adhesion.”

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Dickey and colleagues from NC State, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), South Korea and RMIT University, Australia set out to develop a simple, cost-effective way to deposit metal coatings on fabric.

According to NC State, the researchers first placed liquid gallium (Ga) into an ethanol solution and used sonication to create Ga nanoparticles. The nanoparticle solution was then spray coated onto the fabric and the Ga adhered to the fibres as the ethanol evaporated.