Advances in antimicrobial coatings

A team of researchers has produced new antimicrobial coatings with potential to prevent diseases from spreading on contaminated surfaces.

Researchers at Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering mixed solutions of lysozyme, a natural product with antimicrobial properties found in egg whites and human tears, with single-walled carbon nanotubes, or SWNTs, which are strong, microscopic pieces of carbon. SWNTs, at one nanometer in diameter, are a perfect cylinder of carbon and keep the lysozyme intact in the coating.

Lysozyme itself is very tough, but single-walled carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, are among the strongest materials known to man. While they are 100 times as strong as steel, they have only one-sixth the weight.

By using layer-by-layer deposition, the team demonstrated the inability of intact Staphylococcus aureus cells to grow on antimicrobial surfaces.

Disinfection generally requires rigorous cleaning with solvent that must remain wet for a given period of time to ensure that surface germs are killed. In contrast, the Auburn researchers have created a surface that is inherently antimicrobial, so how long it is wet is not an issue.

The research paper, 'Strong Antimicrobial Coatings: Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Armored with Biopolymers', was recently featured in Nano Letters.