Personal protective equipment (PPE) is critical to protect healthcare workers (HCWs) from highly infectious diseases such as COVID-19. However, hospitals have been at risk of running out of the safe and effective PPE including personal protective clothing needed to treat patients with COVID-19, due to unprecedented global demand. In addition, there are only limited manufacturing facilities of such clothing available worldwide, due to a lack of available knowledge about relevant technologies, ineffective supply chains, and stringent regulatory requirements. Therefore, there remains a clear unmet need for coordinating the actions and efforts from scientists, engineers, manufacturers, suppliers, and regulatory bodies to develop and produce safe and effective protective clothing using the technologies that are locally available around the world. In this review, we discuss currently used PPE, their quality, and the associated regulatory standards. We survey the current state-of-the-art antimicrobial functional finishes on fabrics to protect the wearer against viruses and bacteria and provide an overview of protective medical fabric manufacturing techniques, their supply chains, and the environmental impacts of current single-use synthetic fiber-based protective clothing. Finally, we discuss future research directions, which include increasing efficiency, safety, and availability of personal protective clothing worldwide without conferring environmental problems.

An anticorrosion layer of a smart polymer coating is developed. The nature and properties of the coating simultaneously provide three mechanisms of corrosion protection: passivation of the metal degradation by controlled release of an inhibitor, buffering of pH changes at the corrosive area by polyelectrolyte layers, and self-curing of the film defects due to the mobility of the polyelectrolyte constituents in the layer-by-layer assembly.

Halloysite particles are aluminum‐silicate hollow cylinders with a length of 0.5–1 µm, an outer diameter of ca. 50 nm and a lumen of 15 nm. These nanotubes are used for loading and sustained release of corrosion inhibitors. The inhibitor is kept inside the particles infinitely long under dry conditions. Here, halloysite nanotubes filled with anticorrosive agents are embedded into a SiOx–ZrOx hybrid film. An aluminum plate is dip‐coated and immersed into 0.1 M sodium chloride aqueous solution for corrosion tests. A defect in the sol–gel coating induces pitting corrosion on the metal accompanied by a strong anodic activity. The inhibitor is released within one hour from halloysite nanotubes at corrosion spots and suppresses the corrosion process. The anodic activity is successfully restrained and the protection remains for a long time period of immersion in NaCl water solution. The self‐healing effect of the sol–gel coating doped with inhibitor‐loaded halloysite nanotubes is demonstrated in situ via scanning vibrating electrode technique measurements.

Multicomponent coating formed by polyelectrolyte multilayers opens new opportunities for anticorrosion protection. Here we demonstrate a novel method of corrosion protection based on formation and deposition of polyelectrolyte multilayers on aluminum and steel alloys, analysis of different polyelectrolyte compositions (strong−strong, strong−weak, weak−weak) as candidates for corrosion protective layers. The multilayer nanonetwork exhibits very high corrosion protection because of the nature and versatility of the polyelectrolyte complex. The anticorrosion activity of the coating is based on the following mechanisms: (1) pH buffer formed by polybase and polyacid complex suppress pH changes caused by corrosion degradation; (2) coating regeneration and defect elimination due to relative mobility of polymer chains in swollen state; (3) polyelectrolyte layers form a carrier for inhibitor allowing its release on demand; (4) polyelectrolyte nanonetwork provides a barrier between surface and environment. We optimize the coating preparation conditions in a rational way by applying various polyacid−polybase combinations. We use the scanning vibration electrode technique to characterize corrosion protection of the novel coating.

The development of active corrosion protection systems for metallic substrates is an issue of prime importance for many industrial applications. The present work shows a new contribution to the design of a new protective system based on surface modified mesoporous silica containers. Incorporation of silica‐based containers into special sol–gel matrix allows for a self‐healing effect to be achieved during the corrosion process. The self‐healing ability occurs due to release of entrapped corrosion inhibitors in response to pH changes caused by the corrosion process. A silica–zirconia‐based hybrid film is used in this work as a coating matrix deposited on AA2024 aluminum alloy. Mesoporous silica nano‐particles are covered layer‐by‐layer with polyelectrolyte layers and loaded with inhibitor [2‐(benzothiazol‐2‐ylsulfanyl)‐succinic acid]. The hybrid film with nanocontainers reveals enhanced long‐term corrosion protection in comparison with the individual sol–gel films. The scanning vibrating electrode technique also shows an effective healing ability of containers to cure the corrosion defects. This effect is due to the release of the corrosion inhibitor triggered by the corrosion processes started in the cavities. The approach described herein can be used in many applications where active corrosion protection of materials is required.

The design of the 3D architecture surfaces with both space- and time-dependent functionality (cell attraction, pH-trigged self-cleaning, antiseptic/disinfection) is in the focus. The innovative story includes: sonochemical surface activation, formation of feedback surface component (pH-responsible micelles), proof of responsive activity (time resolved cell adhesion and bacteria deactivation) and space adhesion selectivity (surface patterning).

Here, a new surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) platform suitable for gas phase sensing based on the extended organization of poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (pNIPAM)-coated nanostars over large areas is presented. This system yields high and homogeneous SERS intensities, and simultaneously traps organic chemical agents as pollutants from the gas phase. pNIPAM-coated gold nanostars were organized into parallel linear arrays. The optical properties of the fabricated substrates are investigated, and applicability for advanced sensing is demonstrated through the detection in the gas phase of pyrene traces, a well-known polyaromatic hydrocarbon.

Two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a wide-bandgap van der Waals crystal with a unique combination of properties, including exceptional strength, large oxidation resistance at high temperatures and optical functionalities. Furthermore, in recent years hBN crystals have become the material of choice for encapsulating other 2D crystals in a variety of technological applications, from optoelectronic and tunnelling devices to composites. Monolayer hBN, which has no center of symmetry, has been predicted to exhibit piezoelectric properties, yet experimental evidence is lacking. Here, by using electrostatic force microscopy, we observed this effect as a strain-induced change in the local electric field around bubbles and creases, in agreement with theoretical calculations. No piezoelectricity was found in bilayer and bulk hBN, where the centre of symmetry is restored. These results add piezoelectricity to the known properties of monolayer hBN, which makes it a desirable candidate for novel electromechanical and stretchable optoelectronic devices, and pave a way to control the local electric field and carrier concentration in van der Waals heterostructures via strain. The experimental approach used here also shows a way to investigate the piezoelectric properties of other materials on the nanoscale by using electrostatic scanning probe techniques.Piezoelectricity is an important property of noncentrosymmetric crystals that allows conversion of mechanical strain into electric field, and vice versa. [1] Recently, two-dimensional (2D) crystals have shown to be a unique platform to investigate and exploit such property for many reasons. First, they have the ability to sustain large strain (up to 10%) before rupture or plastic deformation, [2] while this is challenging to achieve in 3D crystals. Second, many crystals are found to be piezoelectric only when reduced to two-dimensionality. This is the case of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides, in which inversion symmetry is broken only in their 2D forms, as recently observed in single-layer MoS2. [3] Furthermore, 2D crystals are likely to show areas of non-uniform strain near corrugations or bubbles that naturally form on substrates. [4] In such areas, strainedinduced local charge densities, ߩ, are expected to appear owing to the local variation in polarization, ܲ , since ߩሺ‫ݎ‬ሻ = −ߘ • ܲሺ‫ݎ‬ሻ. [5] 2D hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a van der Waals crystal with remarkable properties [2a, 6] and is an essential component of many new 2D technologies. [7] Recently, single-layer hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has been theoretically predicted to be piezoelectric due to its broken inversion symmetry. [5,8] Boron and Nitrogen atoms in hBN are arranged in a honeycomb lattice similarly as graphene, but the presence of different elements in the two sublattices of its unit cell makes it non-centrosymmetric. On the other hand, its bilayer and bulk counterparts recover the inversion symmetry and, therefore, no piezoelectricity is expected. [5,8] Here we r...