Autoclavable, Breathable, and Waterproof Membranes Tailored by Ternary Nanofibers for Reusable Medical Protective Applications

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 created severe shortages of prevention materials and supplies, and the reuse of medical protective clothing is ongoing worldwide. However, it has remained a significant challenge to realize the reusability of the current medical protective clothing. We reported a scalable strategy to create autoclavable ternary electrospun nanofibrous membranes (TENMs) by introducing the elastomer polyurethane (PU) and low-surface-energy fluorinated polyurethane (FPU) into poly(ether sulfone) (PES) fibers via electrospinning. The advantage of this design was that we could balance the waterproof-breathable function and the thermostable performance of the membrane by controlling the PES/PU/FPU mass ratio. The resulting TENMs showed excellent performances of a high moisture transmission rate of 8.3 kg m-2 day-1, a high hydrostatic pressure of 82.56 kPa, a high bacteria retention rate of 99.99%, a high aerosol retention rate of 99.99%, and autoclave sterilization-invariant to 10 cycles. The successful preparation of the material can lead to the reuse of medical protective clothing in the foreseeable future. © 2021 American Chemical Society.