Viral infections are a serious health challenge, and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for antiviral measures and treatments for clean surfaces, especially in public places. Here, we review a range of natural and synthetic surface materials and coatings with antiviral properties, including metals, polymers and biopolymers, graphene and antimicrobial peptides, and their underpinning antiviral mechanisms. We also discuss the physico-chemical properties of surfaces which influence virus attachment and persistence on surfaces. Finally, an overview is given of the current practices and applications of antiviral and virucidal materials and coatings in consumer products, personal protective equipment, healthcare and public settings.

No abstract

Organic-inorganic hybrid materials enable the design and fabrication of new materials with enhanced properties. The interface between the organic and inorganic materials is often critical to the device's performance and therefore chemical characterization is of significant interest. Since the interfaces are often buried, milling by focused ion beams (FIB) to expose the interface is becoming increasingly popular. Chemical imaging can subsequently be obtained using secondary ion mass spectrometry.However, the FIB milling process damages the organic material. In this study, we make an organicinorganic test structure to develop a detailed understanding of the processes involved in FIB milling and SIMS imaging. We provide an analysis methodology that involves a "clean-up" process using sputtering with an Argon gas cluster ion source to remove the FIB induced damage. The methodology is evaluated for an additive manufactured encapsulated strain sensor containing silver tracks embedded in a polymeric material. We show a polymer-silver interface with a resolution of 440 nm and that the polymer contains a low level of silver particulates.

A procedure has been established to define the interface position in depth profiles accurately when using secondary ion mass spectrometry and the negative secondary ions. The interface position varies strongly with the extent of the matrix effect and so depends on the secondary ion measured. Intensity profiles have been measured at both fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl-l-pentafluorophenylalanine (FMOC) to Irganox 1010 and Irganox 1010 to FMOC interfaces for many secondary ions. These profiles show separations of the two interfaces that vary over some 10 nm depending on the secondary ion selected. The shapes of these profiles are strongly governed by matrix effects, slightly weakened by a long wavelength roughening. The matrix effects are separately measured using homogeneous, known mixtures of these two materials. Removal of the matrix and roughening effects give consistent compositional profiles for all ions that are described by an integrated exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) profile. Use of a simple integrated Gaussian may lead to significant errors. The average interface positions in the compositional profiles are determined to standard uncertainties of 0.19 and 0.14 nm, respectively, using the integrated EMG function. Alternatively, and more simply, it is shown that interface positions and profiles may be deduced from data for several secondary ions with measured matrix factors by simply extrapolating the result to Ξ = 0. Care must be taken in quoting interface resolutions since those measured for predominantly Gaussian interfaces with Ξ above or below zero, without correction, appear significantly better than the true resolution. Graphical Abstractᅟ Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13361-018-1905-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.