Light-Activated Materials for Cleaner, Safer Environments - from Earth to Space

For thousands of years, keeping our shared spaces clean has relied on the same act - wiping and washing by hand with natural or chemical agents that demand effort, wear off quickly and, more recently, leave a polluting footprint. EcoAida, a Sardinian deep-tech startup born from academic research at the Porto Conte Ricerche science park in Alghero, takes a different route. Its carbon dots (C-dots) are carbon-based, metal-free nanoparticles, compliant with the EU law governing the use of chemical substances, that under ordinary visible light produce reactive oxygen species - mainly singlet oxygen - and, as shown in laboratory testing, lower the microbial and viral burden on the surfaces functionalized with C-dots.

Embedded a single time into ordinary materials - coatings, rigid surfaces and technical fabrics - they provide a long-lasting, light-driven protective action that releases no chemicals, with applications across facility management, healthcare, transport, food and marine settings. Validated in the laboratory - including high-biocontainment testing - and backed by international publications and patents, EcoAida is now approaching industrial partners to move it toward real-world adoption. In closed and orbital habitats, where water and supplies are limited, this opens the way to lasting, environmentally friendly surface cleanliness. It marks a change of paradigm: as we set our sights on space, we leave the old ways behind and look ahead, building hygiene into the materials themselves.

Speakers
Giancarlo Buccarella, Lawyer
Davide De Forni, Chief Scientific Officer at ViroStatics SRL