Preparation of multifunctional Ag@<scp>PAN</scp>/<scp>PBA</scp> nanofibrous aerogel membranes for efficient <scp>PM</scp> 0.3 capture and effective antibacterial activity

Abstract

Abstract Nanofibrous aerogels (NFAs) have great application potential in air filtration due to their unique hierarchical porous structure and high porosity. However, the development of air filter with high air filtration efficiency, as well as good antibacterial activity, remains a major challenge. In an effort to overcome this challenge, here we report a facile methodology for the fabrication of robust and flexible nanofibrous aerogel membranes (NFAMs) with a three‐dimensional (3D) hierarchical porous structure. Moreover, the microstructures and filtration performance of the obtained NFAMs could be easily tuned by adjusting the nanofiber concentration in the aerogel. The resultant Ag@PAN/PBA NFAMs had high filtration efficiency (99.82%) towards PM0.3, low pressure drop (134 Pa) and desirable quality factor (0.0472 Pa −1 ) under an airflow velocity of 32 L/min. Furthermore, the NFAMs also exhibited excellent antibacterial activities against Escherichia coli (99.46%) and Staphylococcus aureus (99.72%). Together, the results presented here suggest that Ag@PAN/PBA NFAMs have great potential in public health protection applications.