Speaker: Prof. Mahesh M. Bandi Affiliation: OIST Graduate University, Japan Date: 25th March 2022 Time: 02:00 PM Venue: Kanada Auditorium Title: Masking it all up: Two Soft Matter solutions for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abstract: I first read about N95 masks and their being the only viable design capable of protecting against
SARS-Cov-2 in February 2020. Academic curiosity initially led me to study their functionality, and when
masks became scarce during the pandemic's early days, I attempted manufacturing N95 masks starting
in March 2020. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss how I built a cotton candy machine in my garage
using a drill and a beer can to fabricate the dielectric fabrics used in N95 masks with discarded plastic
containers as my input material. In the second part, I'll discuss how I took my microwave oven apart to
construct a corona discharge system to electrocharge these dielectric fabrics to achieve the N95 filtration
standard.
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