BOULDER, COLORADO—In the delivery room of his manufacturing unit right here, Richard Gordon pulls open the drawer of a restaurant-style convection oven to indicate off a tray crammed along with his firm’s new, freshly sterilized product: multicolored face masks that characteristic an origami design.
“I thought masks were a total horror,” Gordon says. “They looked awful, felt awful, were hard to breathe in, were hot, and leaked.” So he and Min Xiao, his spouse, began an organization named Air99 in 2016 to provide one thing significantly better.
Now, their masks, named the Airgami, is vying for a part of the half-million greenback purse within the last part of the Mask Innovation Challenge, run by the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). The contest goals to advertise masks which have a greater match, perform, and look than present designs and to nurture the “rather underfunded and a little stagnant” ecosystem of masks improvement, says Kumiko Lippold, a BARDA pharmacologist and toxicologist who organizes the problem.
Lippold acknowledges the competition could seem “a little bit behind the curve,” provided that the pandemic has abated and plenty of international locations have dropped masking necessities. Still, there’s “a significant appetite for mask innovation,” she says. SARS-CoV-2 could have surprises in retailer that can require folks to masks up once more—and there’ll seemingly be different pandemics. “We’re building tomorrow’s mask,” Lippold says.
The 10 finalists, chosen from 1448 entrants, embrace mom-and-pop innovators like Air99, a group at Georgetown University, and industrial giants Amazon and Levi Strauss & Co. To consider the masks, BARDA has teamed up with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)—which exams and approves N95 “respirators,” the kind that snugly match the face and have a excessive filtration effectivity—and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). BARDA plans to announce a winner in October.
With billions of individuals donning face masks for the primary time in 2020—and complaining about their shortcomings—the pandemic has triggered a surge in masks analysis. In a examine printed in June 2021, for instance, NIOSH engineer and aerosol researcher William Lindsley and colleagues in contrast 19 extensively used face coverings by attaching them to a respiratory aerosol simulator, a model headform that breathes and coughs.
William Lindsley of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health makes use of model headforms to check masks. This setup simulates a classroom.National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
All masks assist, Lindsley stresses: “The two biggest misconceptions are that they don’t work and that they’re magic and you’re protected, no matter what.” But bandanas are “terrible” at each filtering inhaled air and capturing aerosols when folks exhale and cough, the examine discovered. Cloths, neck gaiters, and medical masks are significantly better, however nonetheless pale compared to NIOSH-approved N95 masks. (In Europe, the equal of N95s are referred to as FFP2 masks.)
The finalists within the BARDA problem every supply distinctive enhancements. In Airgami’s case, magnificence is necessary, says Gordon, {an electrical} and pc engineer—however that’s not why he and Xiao entered the sector. Their quest started properly earlier than the pandemic, once they moved to Suzhou, China, in 2011 for Xiao’s new job. Pollution there was horrible, and the N95 masks they’d introduced, made by 3M for development employees, didn’t match their younger son. “I immediately started cutting out 3M masks and gluing them and stapling them just to shrink them down to fit him,” Gordon says. “Gotta give [the] kid clean air. Very, very simple,” he says.
Richard Gordon and Min Xiao determined to develop a brand new face masks after they couldn’t discover a good one to guard their younger son from air air pollution. “I thought masks were a total horror,” Gordon says.Richard Gordon
His son’s drawback, coupled with the discomfort and match points he had along with his personal face coverings, led Gordon to commit himself to designing a greater masks after the household moved again to the United States in 2015. He stumbled onto an origami present, Above the Fold, that had a “mind-blowing” piece by physicist Robert Lang, a world-renowned origami mathematician and artist. The Airgami is a twist on a well-liked origami design, the magic ball—also referred to as the dragon’s egg—sliced in half, which creates a big respiration area and matches tightly on the face. The interior of three polypropylene layers has an electrostatic cost to lure particles—the guts of N95 expertise. The masks is reusable, could be rinsed or disinfected with warmth, and is available in 4 completely different sizes and varied colourful prints, together with rainbows and camouflage. Lang, who’s now on the Air99 board, helped Gordon create a pc program to automate the creasing.
Even so, every masks should be hand-assembled and sells for $29.99. But Gordon says provide can’t meet demand. “The world is flooded with $1.50 masks, and there’s no way we’re going to compete, but they’re all ugly and they don’t necessarily fit great,” says Gordon, who hopes to decrease the worth with extra automation.
Another finalist, Amazon’s PerfectFit Mask, additionally makes use of an origami design and is available in varied style patterns and sizes. An organization named 4C Air, co-founded by physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Chu, makes the BreSafe Transparent Mask, which goals to enhance masked conversations by permitting a listener to see the speaker’s lips. The hard-shell AtmoBlue masks, made by Blue Sky Labs, has built-in followers that blow incoming air throughout high-efficiency particulate absorbing filters and a sensor that displays air high quality for air pollution. The Georgetown group developed nanoporous metallic foams which can be terribly environment friendly filters, ultralightweight, and in addition reusable.
The hard-shell AtmoBlue masks has built-in followers that blow incoming air throughout filters and have a sensor that displays air high quality for air pollution.Leandro Rolon
Levi Strauss took a distinct tack: Its masks, the Veil, affords N95-level safety with a easy design that any garment producer can produce with scissors and a stitching machine—and sports activities the model’s world-famous emblem for added coolness. There is even a face masking particularly for toddlers made by PaciMask that permits mother and father to connect a pacifier and options cartoon characters, animals, and spaceships. (Its slogan: “It’s just a mask, baby!”)
NIOSH’s normal N95 take a look at assesses masks’ filtration effectivity by exposing them to aerosolized sodium chloride and measuring the quantity that passes by. An N95 ranking means a masks filters at the very least 95% of “nonoily” (therefore the N) particles. But for the BARDA problem, NIOSH devised further exams. “We got to really think about the testing innovation,” says bodily chemist Sandeep Patel, who heads the BARDA division overseeing the problem. Recognizing that masks match is dependent upon face form, for instance, researchers designed 5 different-size model headforms, based mostly on the faces of almost 4000 folks. The masks problem encourages entrants to provide analyses of how their masks match digital variations of all 5.
Fluid dynamicist Matthew Staymates makes use of schlieren imaging to seize how air escapes from masks. This video reveals Staymates unmasked, correctly masked, and masked under the nostril.M. Staymates/N. Hanacek/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
NIST fluid dynamicist Matthew Staymates can even take a look at the finalists for leakage with schlieren imaging, which makes use of lenses and mirrors to visualise adjustments in air temperature. Staymates {couples} this with high-speed video cameras, which permits him to seize air escaping from the sides of masks when folks breathe. The main problem confronting maskmakers isn’t new supplies, however design, Staymates says. “We can make fabrics that have amazing filtration efficiency, and the N95 is a great example,” he says, however “how can we get smart about designing shapes that can really seal well so my glasses don’t fog up?”
Gordon and Xiao see a shiny future for his or her firm even after the pandemic ends. “We started out as an antipollution mask, and I think it is still the core business,” Xiao says. Still, COVID-19—and changing into a BARDA finalist—has given the corporate a lift they by no means imagined, Gordon says: “The pandemic was the greatest marketing awareness campaign of all history.”