Jadavpur University Students Have Made An Electromagnetic Mask They Claim Can Kill Viruses

Students of Jadavpur University in West Bengal have made an electronic mask that will be able to annihilate any virus in close proximity to the person wearing it, an official said.

The design of the mask, made by the Instrumentation department, has been readied but production will be made only after the approval of concerned authorities of government, a senior university official, associated with the project, said.

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The electromagnetic field created by the mask will annihilate any virus, including sars-2, which comes in the striking distance of the person wearing it, the official said.

"The mask is self-chargeable," he said.

The mask will certainly be more effective than the three layer surgical masks currently available in the market, he said.

Researchgate

"The design has been made ready. But we need to take it forward. We need to build a prototype after getting consent from an organisation like ICMR. We will then formally think about taking the concept to manufacturers of medical products," Pro-Vice Chancellor Chiranjib Bhattacharya said.

Pricing and other things can come after this process is over, he added.

"The proposed mask is designed with multilayer protection sheets, in which the first two layers act as triboelectric (TE) filter and the outer one is a smart filter. The conjugated effect of contact electrification and electrostatic induction of the proposed smart mask are effective in inactivating the span of virus-ladden aerosols in a bidirectional way.

researchgate

Five pairs of triboseries fabrics i.e. nylon - polyester, cotton - polyester, poly(methyl methacrylate) - PVDF, lylon - PVDF and polypropylene - polyester have been optimized in this study in terms of their effective tribo-electric charge densities as 83.13, 211.48, 38.62, 69 and 74.25 nC/m2, respectively.

This smart mask can be used by a wide range of people because of its simple mechanism, self-driven (harvesting mechanical energy from daily activities, e.g. breathing, talking, or other facial movements functionalities, and effective filtration efficiency and thus, it is expected to be potentially beneficial to slow down the devastating impact of COVID-19," details posted by the researchers online stated.