55598Technical Textile Coatings for Facemask Technology to Reduce COVID-19 TransmissionClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKFacemasks play an essential role in protecting the public from the risks of COVID-19 transmission. Unfortunately, facemasks are either ineffective or complex and expensive items that are only suitable for use in a hospital. There is limited evidence that they are effective for use by the general public, despite the obvious potential to reduce transmission rates if effective. A key reason that current consumer facemasks are ineffective is their inability in activate viruses and prevent the build-up of liquid droplets in the fabric - which is primarily due to the current materials of construction. The aim of this project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a two-sided coating for fabrics that can enable design of simple, low-cost, single layer facemasks that reduces the transmission of viruses such as COVID-19\. The coatings we have identified are designed to provide water-resistance and anti-viral functionalities to a single fabric; enabling low-cost single-layer facemasks to be produced at scale. There are currently no alternative technologies that are able to deliver convenient single-pass two-sided coating of fabrics. The global demand is expected to be high and rapidly growing, with an urgent need for at least 20 million masks per day to address the current COVID-19 pandemic . We have successfully demonstrated the deposition of antiviral/water-resistant functionalities on various fabrics for facemasks and this has been proven effective against pathogenic bacteria and viruses. This “extension for impact” will be used to demonstrate the potential of our coating technology to deliver antiviral functionality to fabrics for medical products and sportswear. These two important product categories are used in environments where the risk for viral transmission are high and antiviral coatings can play a key role in reducing the spread of pathogenic species, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19. Furthermore, this project extension significantly increases the addressable market for our Novara technology and increases the commercial potential of the project.