Dana Filoti of the University of New Hampshire will present thin films of
silver and copper she has developed that can kill bacteria and may one day help
to cut down on hospital infections. The antimicrobial properties of silver and
copper have been known for centuries -- last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency officially registered copper alloys, allowing them to be marketed with
the label "kills 99.9% of bacteria within two hours." Copper ions
are known to penetrate bacteria and disrupt molecular pathways important for
their survival.
Using zeolite ceramic structures, Filoti is testing the hypothesis that the
combination of silver and copper might work synergistically to better kill bacteria,
work that she will present on November 12 at a meeting of the scientific society
AVS in San Jose. "The hard ceramic structure looks like Swiss cheese and
inside the holes there are ions of silver and copper," says Filoti.
By experimenting with the ratio of the two metals and the texture of the thin
films, she has been able to reduce the amount of microbes present on the surface
by 99 percent. One application of these antimicrobials, which Filoti is developing
in partnership with a company in New Hampshire, is an antimicrobial face mask
designed to protect against pathogens that cause many hospital-acquired infections.
The talk "Synergistic Ag (111) and Cu (111) Texture Evolution in Phase
Segregated Cu1-xAgx Magnetron Sputtered Composite Thin Films" is at 10:40
a.m. on Thursday, November 12, 2009. Abstract: http://www.avssymposium.org/Open/SearchPapers.aspx?PaperNumber=TF-ThM-9
Posted November 9th, 2009
