Antimicrobial Fabrics Coated with Nano-Sized Silver Salt Crystals

Abstract

Antimicrobial fabrics find many applications in medical, hygiene, protection, sport, health care, personal care, filtration, and other markets. For example, such fabrics are used in wound dressings or bio-hazard protective clothings, and are nowadays compared in terms of of inhibition and kill rate of bacteria which are both related to the antibacterial activity. However, antimicrobial fabrics differ in biocidal performance. While many antimicrobial treatments for fabrics confer bacteriostatic activity i.e. impede growth of the inoculum bacteria under the fabric, very few allow diffusion and sustained release of antimicrobial agents leading to a zone of inhibition, especially after washing or autoclaving. This paper presents a new water based colloidal solution of a silver salt, which was applied as a coating to different fabrics. AATCC 147 Parallel Streak Standard Method was performed in order to evaluate antibacterial activity of diffusable antimicrobial agents on treated fabrics.