Development of graphene-based antibacterial surface for medical devices - Efficient, safe and affordable

Purpose and goal

The overall goal of the project was to “develop a manufacturing process for an affordable antibacterial surface based on vertical graphene flakes and assess the potential to apply this surface to medical devices for reducing device related infections”. This goal has not yet been achieved, however new knowledge and infrastructure has been generated and there are still some interesting leads that we want to pursue.

Expected results and effects

Slow start due to the pandemic prevented us from reaching the project goal, and therefore the results have not yet produced the expected effects when it comes to developing a commercial antibacterial surface based on vertical graphene flakes. However, the project has generated additional knowledge about what is required to achieve a sufficiently strong antibacterial effect and created an infrastructure to be able to faster evaluate future samples. These results have also been presented at two international conferences and will be published in at least three scientific articles.

Planned approach and implementation

The project plan assumed that we relatively fast initiated evaluation of different materials in combination with different qualities of graphene flakes. Work was delayed when the new recruitment was delayed due to the pandemic and the machine that was to be used for the work broke down. The result was that we ended up a little out of step and that the whole project was delayed, which meant that we never had time to explore all leads we planned. Evaluation of the potential for clinical use of surfaces made was not carried out as no scalable method produced a surface with sufficient effect.