Superhemophobic and Anti-Virofouling Coating for Mechanically Durable and Wash-Stable Medical Textiles.

Medical textiles have a need for repellency to body fluids such as blood, urine, or sweat that may contain infectious vectors that contaminate surfaces and spread to other individuals. Similarly, viral repellency has yet to be demonstrated and long-term mechanical durability is a major challenge. In this work, we demonstrate a simple, durable and scalable coating on nonwoven polypropylene textile that is both superhemophobic and anti-virofouling. The treatment consists of polytetrafluo-roethylene (PTFE) nanoparticles in a solvent thermally sintered to polypropylene (PP) microfibers which creates a robust, low surface energy, and multi-layer, multi-length scale rough surface. The treated textiles demonstrate a static contact angle of 158.3 +/- 2.6 degrees and hysteresis of 4.7 +/- 1.7 degrees for fetal bovine serum and reduce serum protein adhesion by 89.7 +/- 7.3% (0.99 log reduction). The coated textiles reduce the attachment of adenovirus type 4 and 7a virions by 99.2 +/- 0.2% and 97.6 +/- 0.1% (2.10 and 1.62 log), respectively, compared to noncoated controls. The treated textiles provide these repellencies by main-taining a Cassie-Baxter state of wetting where the surface area in contact with liquids is reduced by an estimated 350 times (2.54 log) compared to control textiles. Moreover, the treated textiles exhibit unprecedented mechanical durability, maintain-ing their liquid, protein, and viral repellency after extensive and harsh abrasion and washing. The multi-layer, multi-length scale roughness provides for mechanical durability through self-similarity and the samples have high pressure stability with a breakthrough pressure of about 255 kPa. These properties highlight the potential of durable, repellent coatings for medical gowning, scrubs, or other hygiene textile applications.