Do you hate your face mask?Hope | Chemistry

Boulder, Colorado —In his factory shipping room here, Richard Gordon opens a drawer in a restaurant-style convection oven and features a colorful face mask featuring the origami design of his company’s new, newly sterilized product. Show off a tray filled with.

“I thought the mask was a complete horror,” says Gordon. “They looked terrible, felt terrible, hard to breathe, hot, and leaked.” So he and his wife Min Xiao launched a company named Air99 in 2016 to make things better. Was born.

Currently, their mask, named Airgami, is competing for part of a $ 500,000 wallet at the final stage of the Mask Innovation Challenge run by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA). The contest aims to promote masks that fit, function and look better than existing designs and foster an ecosystem of mask development that is “slightly stagnant due to lack of funding”.

Lippold acknowledges that the contest may appear “a little late” given that the pandemic has been eased and many countries have withdrawn masking requirements. Still, she says, there is “a great desire for mask innovation.” SARS-CoV-2 may have a surprise in the store that people will need to mask again, and other pandemics may occur. “We are making tomorrow’s masks,” says Lippold.

The 10 finalists, Selected from 1448 participants, including mom and pop innovators like Georgetown University’s team Air99, and industrial giants Amazon and Levi Strauss & Co. To evaluate the mask, BARDA has partnered with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. (NIOSH) —Tests and approves a type of N95 “respiratory” that fits snugly on the face and has high filtration efficiency — and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIST). BARDA will announce the winner in October.

The pandemic caused a surge in mask research, as there were billions of people wearing face masks for the first time in 2020, complaining about their shortcomings.so study For example, NIOSH engineer and aerosol researcher William Lindsley and colleagues, published in June 2021, attached 19 widely used face covers to the breathing aerosol simulator, the head form of a breathing and coughing mannequin. Was compared.

Lindsley helps all masks. “The two biggest misconceptions are that the mask doesn’t work and that it’s magical and protected no matter what.” But research shows that Bandana filters inhaled air. Both are “terrible” in capturing aerosols when people exhale and cough. Cloths, neck warmers, and medical masks are much better, but still thinner than the NIOSH-approved N95 masks. (In Europe, the equivalent of N95 is known as the FFP2 mask.)

The finalists of the BARDA Challenge each offer their own improvements. For Airgami, beauty is important, says electrical and computer engineer Gordon, but that’s not why he and Xiao entered the field. Their quest began long before the pandemic when they moved to Suzhou, China in 2011 for Xiao’s new job. The pollution there was terrible, and the N95 masks made by 3M for the construction workers they brought did not suit their little son. “I immediately cut out the 3M mask, glued it, and started stapled it to shrink it to fit him,” says Gordon. “Recommendation [the] The clean air of the child. It’s very, very simple, “he says.

His son’s problems, coupled with the discomfort and fit problems of his own facial covering, led Gordon to focus on better mask design after the family returned to the United States in 2015. .. He came across an origami show. Above the crease, It had a “amazing” work by the world-famous origami mathematician and artist Robert Lang. Airgami is a twist on the popular origami design, slicing a magic ball (also known as a dragon’s egg) in half to create a large breathing space that fits snugly on your face. .. Inside the three polypropylene layers, there is an electrostatic charge for trapping the particles. This is the heart of N95 technology.The mask is reusable, can be rinsed and disinfected with heat, and comes in 4 different sizes Various colorful printsIncludes, rainbow and camouflage. Lang, who is currently on the Air99 board, helped Gordon create a computer program to automate the creases.

Still, each mask has to be assembled by hand and is priced at $ 29.99. But Gordon says supply cannot meet demand. “The world is full of $ 1.50 masks. There’s no way we can compete, but they’re all ugly and don’t always fit well,” he hopes to lower prices with more automation. Gordon says.

Another finalist, Amazon Perfect Fit MaskWe also use origami designs and come in a variety of fashion patterns and sizes.Name company 4C airCo-founded by physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Chu, BreSafe Transparent Mask aimed at improving masked conversations by allowing listeners to see the speaker’s lips. Create.Hard shell AtmoBlue The Blue Sky Labs mask incorporates a fan that blows air into a highly efficient particle absorption filter and a sensor that monitors the quality of the air and monitors pollution.The George Town Group We have developed a highly efficient filter, ultra-lightweight, and reusable nanoporous metal foam.

Levi Strauss has adopted another method. Its masks and veils provide N95 level protection with a simple design that any clothing maker can manufacture with scissors and sewing machines, sporting the brand’s world-famous logo and enhancing its coolness.There is also a face cover especially for toddlers PaciMask This allows parents to put on a pacifier, featuring cartoon characters, animals, and spaceships. (That slogan: “It’s just a mask, baby!”)

NIOSH standard N95 test The filtration efficiency of the mask is evaluated by exposing the mask to aerosolized sodium chloride and measuring the amount that passes through it. The N95 rating means that the mask filters at least 95% of “non-oil” (and therefore N) particles. However, for the BARDA challenge, NIOSH devised additional tests. “We really had to think about testing innovation,” says Sandeep Patel, a physical chemist who heads the BARDA division that oversees the challenge. For example, recognizing that the fit of a mask depends on the shape of the face, researchers have designed five different sized mannequin headforms based on the faces of about 4000 people. The Mask Challenge encourages participants to provide an analysis of how masks fit into all five digital versions.

NIST Fluid Mechanic Matthew Stymertes We also test finalist leaks using Schlieren imaging, which uses lenses and mirrors to visualize changes in temperature. Staymates combines this with a high-speed video camera to allow people to capture the air escaping from the edges of the mask as they breathe. The main challenge faced by mask makers is design, not new materials, says Staymates. “You can make fabrics with amazing filtration efficiency. The N95 is a good example,” he says, but “how to design a shape that can be really tightly sealed so that the glasses don’t get fogged”. Will it be? “

Gordon and Xiao still see a bright future for their company after the pandemic is over. “We started out as pollution masks, but I think it’s still a core business,” says Xiao. Still, COVID-19 (and becoming a BARDA finalist) gave the company an unimaginable boost, says Gordon: “The pandemic was the biggest marketing awareness campaign in all history. . “