Advanced Antimicrobial Surface Testing
Wirral SME, SafeClimb designs, manufactures and maintains height safety equipment, including safety ropes and harnesses, for industrial and leisure markets worldwide. Due to enhanced cleaning regimens adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, including multi-surface sanitising products being used by organisations globally, SafeClimb wanted to check that their customers’ use of these antimicrobial products would not impact the integrity of their products.
The company wanted to ensure that the continued use of antimicrobial products transferred by intensive cleaning and sanitation routines, were not damaging products, such as its safety ropes.
NBIC’s Open Innovation Hub for Antimicrobial Surfaces at the University of Liverpool and iiCON: Infection Innovation Consortium and have been working in collaboration with SafeClimb to support the company with advanced antimicrobial surface testing.
Medium magnification SEM images of harness samples (a) and (b) untreated; (c) and (d) treated.
NBIC Interdisciplinary Research Fellow, Dr Jiaqi Luo, at NBIC’s Open Innovation Hub for Antimicrobial Surfaces, designed a work package to visually analyse a number of products and materials before and after daily sanitisation. Electron microscopy and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy were used to evaluate the material at a sub-micron level to visualise the materials and check for signs of degradation. Liza Collard, Managing Director of SafeClimb said,
“It’s been fantastic to have worked with iiCON to access the world-leading surface analysis expertise at NBIC’s Open Innovation Hub for Antimicrobial Surfaces. Being able to have the University of Liverpool’s expert team carry out incredibly detailed and thorough testing on our products has been incredibly helpful.”
Professor Rasmita Raval, NBIC Liverpool Co-Director and Director of the Open Innovation Hub for Antimicrobial Surfaces said,
“We’re delighted to have been able to support SafeClimb with advanced surface examination of their safety harnesses and products.”
“Through iiCON’s fully-funded Merseyside SME Support Programme, SMEs like SafeClimb are able to access advanced surface analysis capability at NBIC’s Open Innovation Hub for Antimicrobial Surfaces. This can be of real benefit to companies that may be struggling with testing requirements that are beyond their day-to- day capability.”
This project was part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) programme: Formulated Materials for Infectious Disease Prevention.