The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide a new means of creating broad-spectrum antimicrobial fabric treatments with a low barrier to entry for manufacturers. This technology promises to deliver antimicrobial coatings at lower overall economic and environmental costs, by reducing solvent usage, waste, and coating loss. Antimicrobial treatments are already used in medicine, as anti-infective treatments of bandages, catheters, and other medical items, and in garments and textiles, as anti-odor treatments. The lower barrier to entry for garment manufacturers is expected to enable more widespread adoption of the technology, which in turn will reduce material and energy waste from excessive laundering and save consumers money. The technology can be adapted to a wide range of fiber types and can be applied without specialized equipment, facilitating the integration into existing manufacturing processes and giving manufacturers access to premium market segments with minimal upfront investment.
This I-Corps project will help improve the market penetration of antimicrobial treatments, which in turn will provide consumers with superior garment performance at reduced environmental and economic costs. The technology uses a new form of soluble silver metal, developed by prior NSF funded research, and an innovative method to coat a variety of different fiber types with bioactive silver, which enables the antimicrobial coatings to be applied at any stage in the manufacturing process. Proof of concept has been demonstrated with basic prototyping, but development of the technology for specific markets and applications demands a better understanding of customer needs. This I-Corps team project is aimed at discovering those customer needs, through extensive customer interviews, in order to inform the development and engineering of products that meet each particular market specific need that is identified.
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.
