Bath researchers join €3M anti-bacterial coating consortium

Collaboration

Researchers at Bath University are to become part of a €3 million European collaboration to pioneer research into safer, more effective, anti-bacterial plastics and coatings that can be used in items such as food packaging, medical devices, wound dressings and nappies.

The team at Bath has developed a range of new compounds that have been shown to be highly effective against common hospital bacterial infections such as MRSA and are safer than existing anti-bacterials based on silver nanoparticles. They will develop these compounds so they can be cheaply and efficiently incorporated into a wide range of materials.

The research team includes colleagues in Barcelona, Spain, Exeter, UK, St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Mainz and Cologne, both in Germany.

Early work by the Bath team has produced new compounds containing zinc, copper and silver, which are effective against common hospital bacteria but are non-toxic to human cell growth.