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Antimicrobial Foams

Introduction

Numerous studies have pointed the hospital mattress, hotel mattress and public seat as a vector for infections. The mattress generally made from flexible polyurethane foams are good reservoirs for microorganisms due to their porous structure. Quaternary ammonium compounds are commonly used as antimicrobial agents providing antimicrobial property on various product surfaces. Among these, membrane active quaternary ammonium compounds do not require a regeneration procedure during use and have a broad spectrum activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, yeast, fungi, and others viruses. Quaternary ammonium compounds have been added to foam formulations and have efficient antimicrobial property.

Antimicrobial mattressFigure 1. Antimicrobial mattress

Antimicrobial Properties

Demirci et al. evaluate the antimicrobial performance of antimicrobial foams.[1] Here, take the Gram-positive bacteria, yeast, and mold for example. In the antimicrobial tests, unmodified (PU) and quaternary ammonium compounds added (PU1, PU2, and PU5) foam swatches were challenged with aureus at concentrations of test I and test II, and the results are summarized in Figure 2. The results show that PU did not exhibit any significant biocidal efficacy and PU1 provided an inactivation of 90%, while PU2 and PU5 showed a better performance by providing about 97% and 99% inactivation. All foams with quaternary ammonium compounds showed sufficient inactivation against bacteria, yeast, and mold. Meanwhile, increasing amount of added quaternary ammonium compounds improves the biocidal performance of the produced foams.

Antimicrobial testsFigure 2. Antimicrobial tests

What Can Alfa Chemistry Do for You?

Alfa Chemistry has a professional team with many years of experience and has focused on the preparation and application of quaternary ammonium compounds. Alfa Chemistry has conducted research on various problems encountered by antimicrobial foams and provide effective solutions to meet customer needs. The related technologies of antimicrobial foams we provide are as follows:

  • Alfa Chemistry can provide antimicrobial performance research to understand the antimicrobial mechanism.
  • Alfa Chemistry can provide technology about foams characterization test, such as SEM, TEM, FTIR and EDXRF characterization.
  • Alfa Chemistry also can customize reliable solutions according to customer needs to help the researchers solve problems in the field of antimicrobial foams.

Reference

  1. Demirci F.; et al. Antimicrobial open-cell polyurethane foams with quaternary ammonium salts. J. APPL. POLYM. SCI., 2018, 135(9): 45914-45922.