Photosensitized Electrospun Nanofibrous Filters for Capturing and Killing Airborne Coronaviruses under Visible Light Irradiation

ABSTRACT

To address the challenge of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, photosensitized electrospun nanofibrous membranes were fabricated to effectively capture and inactivate coronavirus aerosols. With an ultrafine fiber diameter ([~] 200 nm) and a small pore size ([~] 1.5 {micro}m), the optimized membranes caught 99.2% of the aerosols of the murine hepatitis virus A59 (MHV-A59), a coronavirus surrogate for SARS-CoV-2. In addition, rose bengal was used as the photosensitizer for the membranes because of its excellent reactivity in generating virucidal singlet oxygen, and the membranes rapidly inactivated 98.9% of MHV-A59 in virus-laden droplets only after 15 min irradiation of simulated reading light. Singlet oxygen damaged the virus genome and impaired virus binding to host cells, which elucidated the mechanism of disinfection at a molecular level. Membrane robustness was also evaluated, and no efficiency reduction for filtering MHV-A59 aerosols was observed after the membranes being exposed to both indoor light and sunlight for days. Nevertheless, sunlight exposure photobleached the membranes, reduced singlet oxygen production, and compromised the performance of disinfecting MHV-A59 in droplets. In contrast, the membranes after simulated indoor light exposure maintained their excellent disinfection performance. In summary, photosensitized electrospun nanofibrous membranes have been developed to capture and kill airborne environmental pathogens under ambient conditions, and they hold promise for broad applications as personal protective equipment and indoor air filters. SynopsisPhotosensitized electrospun nanofibrous filters with excellent capture-and-kill performance against coronaviruses were designed and implemented to prevent the airborne transmission of COVID-19. Table of Contents O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=103 SRC="FIGDIR/small/454404v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (39K) org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@171d6corg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@18caad5org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@23b902org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@14746e4_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG