BENGALURU: A team of researchers at the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS) has come up with a recipe for making face masks, termed as Tribo E Mask, that can hold electric charges to restrict the entry of infections — interestingly, without any external power.
The innovation by Pralay Santra, Ashutosh Singh, and Prof Giridhar U Kulkarni relies on electrostatics. When two non-conducting layers are rubbed against each other, the layers develop positive and negative charges instantly and continue to hold the charges for some time.
They have used this electric field, quite strong at proximity, to deactivate germs. “We have borrowed ideas from physics textbooks on triboelectricity; something k
