Antibacterial Activity of Zinc Oxide Thin Films by Atomic Layer Deposition for Personal Protective Equipment Applications

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that atomic layer deposition can produce uniform zinc oxide thin films on PPE, significantly enhancing antimicrobial activity against E. coli compared to traditional coatings.

Contribution

It introduces ALD as an effective method for depositing antimicrobial ZnO coatings on PPE, overcoming limitations of traditional coating techniques.

Findings

ALD-ZnO coating is uniform and adherent on PPE fabric.

ALD-ZnO exhibits high UV absorption and strong antimicrobial activity.

Statistical analysis confirms significant reduction of E. coli growth with ALD-ZnO.

Abstract

The global pandemic has significantly increased the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE). The antimicrobial coating has been broadly applied to PPE to improve its prevention capability, especially after prolonged usage. However, antimicrobial coating by traditional methods, such as chemical vapor deposition, spraying, and slurry coating, suffers from drawbacks such as low efficiency, poor coverage, and loose adhesion to PPE. To overcome these limitations, this work adopted an atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique to deposit a zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film (~ 312.8 nm thick) as an antimicrobial coating and proved its advantage for depositing uniform ZnO coating on PPE with a fabric structure. Analysis by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed the crystal structure and chemical composition of the ALD-ZnO. Ultraviolet-visible spectra disclosed a high absorption level of about 4.8 from 200 nm to 380 nm wavelength for ALD-ZnO, in contrast to 3.8 for commercial ZnO powders. Moreover, the ALD-ZnO exhibited strong antimicrobial properties when tested against Escherichia coli (E.Coli) in contrast to the control and bare glass samples. The colony-forming unit (CFU/ml) remained zero for all ALD-ZnO samples while varying between 2.30*109 and 4.97*109 with a median of 4.36*109 for the control and between 9.10*108 and 3.27*109 with a median of 2.04x 109 for the bare glass. Statistic analysis using null-hypothesis significance testing revealed that the calculated P value, between bare glass and control, ALD-ZnO and control, and bare glass and control, were all smaller than 0.0001 and significantly smaller than 0.05 alpha value, suggesting a high confidence level of ALD-ZnO as the main factor for preventing E.Coli growth.