The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is that it will lay the foundation for developing a novel ?rechargeable? antimicrobial coating product that is easily applied to, and absorbed by, a wide variety of surfaces, to prevent the transmission of contaminants. In the food industry, this antimicrobial coating product could help to reduce the public health risk and burden due to foodborne illness outbreaks and reduce economic losses for food industry due to spoilage or pathogenic microorganism contamination. For the health care industry, the coating could provide a low-cost and highly-effective option for preventing the cross-contamination of drug-resistant microorganism or ?superbugs? on communal environmental surfaces in hospitals and health care facilities. If new products are successfully developed and go to market, it will bring economical reward to the society and improve human life quality. Ultimately, it can help to strengthen the US food and health care industries and reduce the cost of government budget for public health.
This I-Corps project is based on a novel N-halamine-based antimicrobial coating material that can be ?recharged? through simply treating with chlorine bleach. This polymer material was designed to overcome several shortcomings of current antimicrobial coatings. There are two critical innovations of our antimicrobial coating material: 1) broad, potent, and rechargeable biocidal function; 2) strong and versatile absorbance on surfaces regardless of materials, sizes, and shapes. We have done a significant amount of work to synthesize, formulate, and prototype the coatings on substrate materials (stainless steels and plastics) that are commonly used for fabricating food and health care equipment and facilities. We have also scaled up for coating and testing on real food equipment parts including metal pipes and plastic conveyor belts. The preliminary data are very promising. We are planning to do trials in the food manufacturing plants using our N-halamine coating soon. Ultimately, the complex problems and challenges in real application environments will inspire more intensive fundamental research to advance knowledge and understanding in food science, environmental microbiology, and antimicrobial chemistry.
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.
