How it is made
Electrospinning, with chemistry in the fiber.
In electrospinning, a polymer solution is charged and drawn into fibers far thinner than a human hair. Aclara's process spins polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) into a continuous nanofiber mat while incorporating a Rose Bengal photoreactive dye into the fiber during spinning: the dye is distributed through the fiber matrix, not applied as a surface finish.
The result is a media with two independent properties:
- Mechanical filtration. The ultrafine fiber network and tortuous pore geometry physically capture aerosols and particulates across the face of the media.
- Embedded photochemistry. Under visible light, the embedded dye generates singlet oxygen at the fiber surface, a photophysical property of the material itself, retained through handling and conversion.
Because both properties belong to the media and not to a downstream treatment, the material behaves consistently through slitting, cutting, lamination, and mask conversion, the steps where coated media can lose their performance.
