Electrospun iron and copper oxide fibers for virus retention applications

This work describes the fabrication of ceramic fibers by electrospinning based on iron(III) oxide or copper(II) oxide. The fibers were produced from organic salt/polymer precursors and transformed into pure ceramic materials by firing. The fibers were designed to remove negatively charged viruses from drinking water. The obtained ceramic fibers were characterized by diameters of 0.23 ± 0.10 μm and 0.17 ± 0.06 μm for iron- and copper-based fibers, respectively. The performance of 0.100 g of fibers in the removal of MS2 bacteriophages in batch adsorption experiments reached log reduction values of 1.70 and 0.44 after 5 min and 10 min of contact time for iron(III) oxide and copper(II) oxide fibers, respectively.