Realtime monitoring and documentation of cleaning and disinfection procedures are indispensable in hygienically demanding areas due to constantly increasing requirements. In order to ensure sufficient disinfection and soil removal, a complete wetting of the entire floor is absolutely necessary. At present, surface wetting of elastic floorings cannot be monitored during wet wiping processes.

Random checks are carried out routinely using contact plates for reviewing of the cleaning and disinfection procedure. Sampling is only carried out on a random basis. Contact plates must be incubated and analyzed by external microbiological laboratories for evaluation. This process takes at least two days and results in high costs. Any necessary corrective procedure of cleaning and disinfection may only be performed with a delay due to the duration of the evaluation process.

Therefore, within the project a new method to control surface wetting of elastic floorings during the wiping process based on optochemical care coatings was developed. These care coatings are based on solvent-responsive core-shell latex particles, which exhibit a reversible change in their fluorescence upon contact with cleaning or disinfectant solutions.

Using optochemical care coatings surface wetting can be traced visually using a cost-effective UV hand lamp and thus ensuring the sufficient application of cleaning and disinfectant solutions on the treated area during wiping process.

The research report is available on request from FRT.