Xuan Li1, Leonardo A. Gutierrez2, Thanh H. Nguyen2, and James Economy3. (1) Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 W Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, (2) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 205 N Mathews Avenue. Room 4146, Urbana, IL 61801, (3) Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, 1304 W. Green St, 203 Met. & Min. Bldg. MC-246, Urbana, IL 61801
Microbial contamination of drinking water is a serious problem of global significance. About 51% of the waterborne disease outbreaks in the United States can be attributed to contaminated ground water.
Development of nanoparticles as viricidal materials is of technological and fundamental scientific importance. Nanoparticles with high surface areas and ultra small particle sizes have dramatically enhanced efficiency and capacity of virus inactivation, which cannot be achieved by their bulk counterparts.
A series of metal oxide nanoparticles coated on glass fiber substrates was developed in our research group for evaluation of their viricidal activity.We also carried out XRD, TEM, surface area measurements, and Zeta potential. MS2 virus inactivation experiments showed that these nanoparticle coated fibers were extremely powerful viricidal materials