Antimicrobial Efficacy
Harsh cleaning chemicals can break down the surface of the screen, which creates new microscopic crevices for bacteria to reside in and reproduce.
Our inorganic antimicrobial coating protects against this and has an excellent antibacterial spectrum as well as heat and solvent resistance. The film’s antimicrobial properties have been specifically formulated to eliminate harmful pathogen growth since a display surface provides an ideal breeding ground for germs. In fact, SterileLight’s CountDownTM Plus incorporates an antimicrobial agent that is shown to be 100 times more effective than conventional agents and 10,000 more effective than taking no action at all. Effective lifetime is significantly increased based on the properties of the agent. In a conventional Ag+ (silver ion) antibacterial coating, silver ions binding to bacteria are concentrated at the layer surface only. To release additional silver ions from the binder material, moisture is required.
A conventional polymer base does not release additional Ag+ antibacterial agents inside the layer due to its poor hydrophilic (water-absorbing) properties required to free more silver ions. The release of additional silver ions to continuously suppress bacteria growth only occurs when sufficient moisture is present to release stored ions from the binder material. The antimicrobial agent in SterileLight’s CountDownTM Plus employs a hyper-hydrophilic binder, which not only enables moisture applied to the surface of the coated layer to affect the release of Ag+, but also release the Ag+ antibacterial solution from within the coated layer. The unique hyper-hydrophilic properties of the binder material therefore enable active replenishment of the antibacterial layer. In laboratory tests using Colon Bacillus and Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria, SterileLight’s CountDownTM PLUS Antimicrobial film’s coating showed a substantial reduction of these harmful bacteria over a 24-hour period.
