INNOVATION-July-August-2020

F E A T U R E

E arly alchemists tried to turn lead into gold, and gold into the elixir of eternal life. Today’s alchemists, otherwise known as engineers, have just as lofty—and potentially world- changing—ambitions. Take Dr. Rishi Gupta, P.Eng., FEC, for example. Gupta’s normal focus as an associate professor in civil engineering at UVic is cement: more specifically, the use of fibre additives and crystalline waterproofing admixtures to develop “smart” concrete that is both more resistant to cracking and capable of healing itself if a crack should appear. But Gupta also has a five-year-old daughter. With fear of the coronavirus beginning to rise dramatically in late February and early March, he began to think about how he could make her safer. “I would take her to a washroom to wash her hands,” he said, “and sometimes I would think maybe it’s not a good idea for her to wash her hands, because she can’t reach the faucets and she’s touching the countertops and she might be picking up more pathogens from the surfaces than she had before.” Soon, one thought led to another: “What if those high-touch surfaces could be anti-viral or anti-bacterial?” A preliminary discussion with Ravi Beech, COO of Valley Acrylic Baths in Mission, which makes high-end acrylic tubs and sinks sparked more thought. “How good would it be,” he said, “for public spaces to have washbasins at the entrances and exits,” particularly high-traffic buildings like schools and malls, hospitals, theatres, and arenas, where they could help slow down the transmission of COVID-19 and other viruses. Within a week of Gupta’s discussion with Beech, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) coincidentally put out a special call for COVID-related, academia/ industry projects, and “the stars aligned.” Gupta submitted a proposal at the end of April, and NSERC approved the one-year grant in less than

two weeks. “We already had our manufacturer, Valley Acrylic,” said Gupta, so now all he needed were a few more experts, such as UVic professor of biology Asit Mazumder, who studies the ecology and molecular microbiology of waterborne pathogens; Mohit Garg, an NSERC post-doctoral fellow in nanotechnology; and Aditi Gupta, UVic’s Engineering and Science Librarian. The team’s goal: to find a way to modify the physical and chemical characteristics of the coating applied to an acrylic sink to make it self- cleaning. The team’s inspiration: the lotus leaf. “The leaf of a lotus flower,” said Gupta, “has a structure that does not allow foreign substances to sit on it. After a rain, it self-cleans—it is pristine. We want to mimic that, to create a coating for washbasins and other surfaces” that would, like the waxy, bumpy coating on a lotus leaf, “be ultra-hydrophobic, where a water droplet just isn’t able to adhere and becomes dry instantaneously. If water can’t stick, hopefully the nanostructure and the microstructure of the surface is such that viruses and pathogens can’t adhere either, or at least the concentrations would be reduced.” The team has already identified a number of additives that might work, including “very fine nanoparticles, finer than 20 microns, that fill up the porosity in a surface so moisture can’t go in,” said Gupta. After initial material testing in his own Facility for Innovative Materials and Infrastructure Monitoring, Gupta will pass promising new coatings over to Mazumder, who will test them for resistance to bacteria and viruses. At the same time, the group is also looking at other materials, such as metals, that research indicates can kill the coronavirus on contact. “If a washbasin was made entirely of such materials, it would have anti-viral properties,” he said, but would also be prohibitively expensive. Instead, “what if the faucet alone was made using these materials and the

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