A Nobel laureate has created a coating that destroys COVID-19 – Technology

Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov and his colleagues at the Swiss Institute of Technology Schaffhausen have created a graphene-based coating, which inactivates 90 percent of the particles of the new coronavirus, influenza virus and other pathogens, reports BTA.

The news was announced by the scientist himself in an online press conference.

There are more than 73 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide.

“We are now working on creating new functional materials that can respond to changes in the environment and change its structure. We are trying to use them in the fight against coronavirus by creating a coating based on two-dimensional materials and polyelectrolytes that can destroy the virus.” , he said.

These materials, which are a form of graphene, two-dimensional carbon, are able to react to the approach of the particles of the new coronavirus or other pathogens and change their structure so that the protein layer of the virus begins to break down.

Novoselov and his colleagues tested the effect of this coating by looking at how it interacts with solutions containing SARS-CoV-2 particles and various strains of influenza. Their experiments showed that 90 percent of pathogenic particles are destroyed, which means that this form of graphene can be used in the fight against the new coronavirus.

Novoselov and Andre Geim, both European scientists of Russian descent, received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on the ultrafine form of carbon, graphene.