Delivering multi-functional antiviral fabrics with Novara digital precision coating

COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of life in the UK and one of the most noticeable is the requirement to wear facemasks, usually made of fabric. It is recognised that airborne transmission is a key pathway for the spread of the virus and it is therefore likely that facemasks will be needed for a many months if not years to come. Fabric facemasks are being adopted worldwide and there is therefore a very large global market emerging for these products, which creates a significant global opportunity for UK manufacturers to deliver innovations that improve their effectiveness.

In addition, many fabric products, ranging from surgical scrubs to train seats, need to be made more hygienic to reduce the spread of germs.

Today's consumer facemasks are either simple and ineffective or complex with multi-layered constructions (e.g,: N95 mask) that are both expensive, unattractive to consumers and challenging to manufacture. It is widely recognised that fabric facemasks do very little to protect the wearer and can also be a source of transmission if used incorrectly. Fabric facemasks have minimal protective benefit and there is now an urgent need for low-cost, simple and consumer-attractive products that more effectively reduce the transmission of COVID-19 to the wearer.

Alchemie Technology has developed a breakthrough textile coating process, Novara, that can be used to manufacture antiviral fabrics to construct more effective fabric facemasks. The textile materials that we are developing for the construction of facemasks are coated with functional materials to deliver properties that reduce the potential for virus transmission and can be applied to many products. We have developed a new process to produce fabrics that perform two critical functions:

Viral inactivation Water resistance

These functions ensures facemask hygiene and reduces potential for virus transmission. We can apply our technology to many types of fabric, enabling a wide range of hygienic textile products to be manufactured.

Innovate UK has supported Alchemie to demonstrate its unique multi-functional antiviral fabric coating technology is feasible and the next step to to translate this success into delivering commercial products. We have proven that our coated fabrics are effective against biological agents and have demonstrated full-scale antiviral coating, which we now offer to UK facemask manufacturers.

The aim of this project is to develop our unique multi-functional Novara fabric coating process to enable production of more hygienic fabric products to effectively reduce the spread of germs, including COVID-19.