Killing viruses with photacatalysis

A simple technique to make a common killing viruses material significantly more effective is a breakthrough from the Rice University labs of Andrew Barron and Qilin Li.

Rather than trying to turn the process into profit, the researchers have put it into the public domain. They hope wide adoption will save time, money and perhaps even lives.The Rice professors and their team reported in Environmental Science and Technology, an American Chemical Society journal, that adding silicone to titanium dioxide, a common disinfectant, dramatically increases its ability to degrade aerosol- and water-borne viruses.

"We're taking a nanoparticle that everyone's been using for years and, with a very simple treatment, we've improved its performance by more than three times without any real cost," said Barron, Rice's Charles W. Duncan Jr.-Welch Professor of Chemistry and a professor of materials science. Barron described himself as a "serial entrepreneur," but saw the discovery's potential benefits to society as being far more important than any thoughts of commercialization.

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a multifaceted compound. It’s the stuff that makes toothpaste white and paint opaque. TiO2 is also a potent photocatalyst that can break down almost any organic compound, and a number of companies are seeking to capitalize on TiO2’s reactivity by developing a wide range of environmentally beneficial products. Tile Tales During the late 1970s, scientists began to realize that the propensity of TiO2 to absorb energy from the UV end of the solar spectrum and then react with water vapor to produce oxygen could be used to create surfaces that were, for all practical purposes, self-cleaning. According to Daniel Blake, principal scientist at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, when TiO2 is exposed to UV light of a wavelength below 385 nanometers in the presence of water vapor, two highly reactive substances are formed: hydroxyl radicals [OH] and a superoxide ion [O2 -1]. Says Blake, “These are highly reactive chemical species.

---

---

Kill within one minute with high ph

Read about simix Kitchen Degreaser

Once clean, the residual photo catalytic activity continues  killing viruses

These Coatings break down the cell wall and outer membrane, allowing cell contents to leak out and TiO2 particles to enter, thereby causing cell damage and death. Hydroxyl radicals are highly reactive and thus short-lived. Superoxide ions, while longer-lived, cannot penetrate the cell membrane because of their negative charge. Therefore, both must interact immediately with the outer surface of an organism unless the TiO2 particle has already penetrated the cell. Research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that the process works equally well on bacterial and fungal spores. Tests performed by Toto and presented at a July 2000 Air and Waste Management Association symposium indicate that the TiO2-treated tiles achieve a 99.9% bacterial kill rate within one hour for such strains as penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Another useful property of TiO2 is that it is superhydrophilic—the surface of a tile treated with it attracts water rather than repelling it. 

Every treated surface becomes a hostile environment for bacteria and viruses

Killing viruses in the most contaminated river

---

 In killing viruses, Barron said titanium dioxide is used to kill viruses and bacteria and to decompose organics via photocatalysis (exposure to light, usually ultraviolet). The naturally occurring material is also used as a pigment in paints, in sunscreen and even as food coloring."If you're using titanium dioxide, just take it, treat it for a few minutes with silicone grease or silica or silicic acid, and you will increase its efficiency as a catalyst," he said.Barron's lab uses "a pinch" of silicon dioxide to treat a commercial form of titanium dioxide called P25. "Basically, we're taking white paint pigment and functionalizing it.

Graduate student and co-author Michael Liga saw the data showing greatly enhanced performance and asked fellow graduate student Huma Jafry what she had done. Jafry, the paper's first author, said, "I didn't do anything," Barron recalled.When Barron questioned Jafry, who has since earned her doctorate, he discovered she used silicone grease to seal the vessel of P25 before heating it.

Subsequent testing with non silicone grease revealed no change in P25's properties, whether the sample was heated or not. Remarkably, Barron said, further work with varying combinations of titanium dioxide and silicone dioxide found the balance between the two at the time of the discovery was nearly spot-on for maximum impact for killing viruses like corona virus.Barron said binding just the right amount of silica to P25 creates an effect at the molecular level called band bending.

"Because the silicone-oxygen bond is very strong, you can think of it as a dielectric," he said. "If you put a dielectric next to a semiconductor, you bend the conduction and valence bands. And therefore, you shift the absorption of the ultraviolet (used to activate the catalyst)."Bending the bands creates a path for electrons freed by the UV to go forth and react with water to create hydroxyl radicals, an oxidant responsible for contaminant degradation and the most significant reactive agent created by titanium dioxide. "If your conduction band bends to the degree that electrons find it easier to pop out and do something else, your process becomes more efficient," Barron said.Li saw great potential for enhanced P25. In developed countries, photo reactors designed to take advantage of the new material in centralized treatment plants could more efficiently kill bacteria and inactivate viruses in water supplies while minimizing the formation of harmful disinfection byproducts, she said.

But the greatest impact for killing viruses, may be in developing nations where water is typically disinfected through the SODIS method, in which water is exposed to sunlight for its heat and ultraviolet radiation."In places where they don't have treatment plants or even electricity, the SODIS method is great, but it takes a very long time to make water safe to drink," Li said. "Our goal is to incorporate this photo catalyst so that instead of taking six hours, it only takes 15 minutes."Barron wants to spread the good news. "Here's a way of taking what is already a very good environmental catalyst and making it better," he said. "It works consistently, and we've done batch after batch after batch of it now. The methodology in the paper is the one we routinely use. As soon as we buy P25, we treat it."The Robert A. Welch Foundation, the U.S. Navy and the National Science Foundation Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology supported the research.Learn about photocatalytic coating here

Story Source:Materials provided by Rice University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:Huma R. Jafry, Michael V. Liga, Qilin Li, Andrew R. Barron.