Chung-Ang University Professor Sanghyuk Woo's Team Develops Super-Adhesive Air Filter Technology

Achieving Breakthroughs in Fine Particle Capture Performance and Filter Lifespan

Chung-Ang University announced on June 9 that a research team led by Professor Sanghyuk Woo from the Department of Chemical Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Chaebin Kim’s research team at Pusan National University, has developed a new adsorption-enhanced air filter technology. This technology is based on dynamic bonding polymers that can not only strongly capture but also absorb fine particles.

(From left) Junyong Park, PhD student at Chung-Ang University; Hyeri Jeon, PhD student at Chung-Ang University; Sanghyuk Woo, Professor at Chung-Ang University; Chaebin Kim, Professor at Pusan National University. Chung-Ang University

This technology is attracting attention as a next-generation air purification solution, overcoming the limitations of conventional air filters and dramatically improving both air purification efficiency and filter lifespan.

Traditional air filters have focused on simply ‘filtering’ dust. However, the force holding the collected dust is only at the nanonewton (nN) level, resulting in the recurring problem of re-dispersal, where already filtered dust is released back into the air.

To address this, filter structures have been made denser, but this led to new problems such as increased energy consumption due to higher air flow resistance and shorter filter replacement cycles.

The research team developed a new adhesive-enhanced filter material by introducing a thin super-adhesive layer on the surface of existing filter media to overcome these limitations.

This super-adhesive layer is designed to form a stable solid film while precisely controlling its dynamic bond exchange properties, enabling it to behave like a liquid at room temperature.

As a result, the team achieved capillary force-based adhesion that is hundreds of times stronger than conventional filters, and succeeded in suppressing re-dispersal by spontaneously absorbing collected dust into the filter interior.

In particular, the absorbed dust does not block the pores of the filter, allowing more fine particles to be filtered while more than doubling the filter’s lifespan compared to conventional products.

The research team expects that this technology can be applied in a wide range of industries, including large building HVAC systems, clean rooms, data centers, automobiles, gas turbines, and household air purifiers.

They also anticipate that a reduced filter replacement cycle will lower waste and save energy, thereby contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions.

Professor Sanghyuk Woo, who led the research, stated, “This study is significant in that it resolved the limitations of existing air filters not by altering their structure, but by innovating the material itself. We expect this new filter material platform, which combines super-adhesive properties and particle absorption, to become a core technology leading the next-generation air purification and filter material markets.”

The results of this research were published in the world-renowned journal ‘Advanced Materials’ under the title “A Super-Adhesive Air Filter With Capillarity-Mediated Spontaneous Particle Absorption via Dynamic Bond Exchange.” The work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Basic Research Program and Original Technology Development Program.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.