A Face Mask with N95 filter that can be worn many times

Engineers design a reusable, silicone rubber face mask, including an N95 filter, can be easily sterilized and worn many times.

Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed a new face mask that they believe could stop viral particles as effectively as N95 masks. Unlike N95 masks, the new masks were designed to be easily sterilized and used many times.

The new mask is made of durable silicone rubber and can be manufactured using injection molding, which is widely used in factories around the world. The mask also includes an N95 filter, but it requires much less N95 material than a traditional N95 mask.

“One of the key things we recognized early on was that in order to help meet the demand, we needed to really restrict ourselves to methods that could scale,” says Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We also wanted to maximize the reusability of the system, and we wanted systems that could be sterilized in many different ways.”

Most of the mask is silicone rubber, and there is space for one or two N95 filters, which are designed to be replaced after every use, while the rest of the mask can be sterilized and reused.

This image shows photos of the mask (A and B) and the steps needed to clean and reuse the mask.