All-Weather Dry Decontaminant Polymer-HO Complex for HD Degradation.

Hydrogen peroxide (HO) is a highly effective decontaminant against chemical warfare agents (CWAs) when present both in a liquid and as a solid powder. For the latter, this can be in the form of HO being complexed to a polymer, such as polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). While a HO-PVP complex is indeed effective at decontaminating CWAs, it is vulnerable to environmental conditions such as high relative humidities (RH), which can dissociate the HO from the complex before it is given the opportunity to react with CWAs. In this paper, we demonstrate that the cross-linked version of PVP forms a highly stable complex with HO, which can withstand both high (40 °C) and low (-20 °C) temperatures as well as maintain stability at high RH up to 90% over several days. Collectively, this lays the framework for processing the HO-PVP complex in a variety of form factors that can maintain efficacy under a wide range of real-world environmental conditions.