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Mr Aldrin OR
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Biography “Passionate and persistent” describe Aldrin Or on his path to becoming a successful innovator. After graduating from HKUST in industrial engineering, Or and his partner invented a nano scaffolding for artificial tissue growth using a 3D printing method. They developed bioelectret materials and composites as surface modification agents to treat the nano scaffoldings with adjustable dielectricity, wettability and biocompatabiity to control and guide the growth of tissue. When the COVID-19 pandemic surged in early 2020, critical shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) arose immediately, in particular face masks in Hong Kong. A key reason was scarcity of an essential nonwoven material called ‘meltblown’, which has electrostatic charges that capture particulate matters too tiny to be filtered by regular textiles and filters. This electrostatic force is the conventional technical practice for virus filtration. While conducting their normal research and development on the nano scaffolding, Or’s team pondered if their unique surface modification and processing experience with bioelectrets for biological uses could be developed to fight COVID-19. The polarity of a virus is negative, so Or and his team’s logical induction was to use a strong positive polarity to arrest the negative-charged virus. Consequently, in February 2020, Or and his team began developing filtering material with strong positive polarity (named C-Polar for short) and experimented extensively, often with western and independent institutes. Of this time, Or has high praise for his team, “Thanks for being such a kickass team and accomplishing miracles every day. It matters. We are burning the midnight oil to burn the midnight oil.” Or’s team discovered that C-Polar was able to significantly arrest bacteria, to a much greater degree than meltblown fabric. The invention of C-Polar bioelectret materials can give PPE the ability to remove bacteria and viruses with a particulate filtering efficiency exceeding 99.9%. Rather than simply passive protection, C-Polar proactively arrests and inhibits both coronavirus and enterovirus with a ratio of over 99.9% in five minutes. In addition, the strong positive polarity is independent of humidity and temperature, which maintains ultrahigh filtration and disinfection efficiency. Cost-effective, practical and energy independent methods to filter viruses from fast air flow had not been well-developed and accepted before 2020. The discovery by Or’s team demonstrated clear ability to solve the dilemma, leading to development of a new technical path and affordable commercial product that outperforms conventional products. Upon submitting the invention to the US Food and Drug Administration, it was classified as “Biological Filtration”, a brand new category for US compliance. To young people thinking about becoming an innovator, Or advises, “to think in a feedback loop, where you are constantly questioning what you have achieved and how it could be done better. It is just like machine learning for your mind training.” Or credits his over 10 years’ experience in manufacturing engineering to enabling him to develop necessary skill sets to transform a concept into an affordable product with consistent quality. On being an innovator, he enthuses, “There is no failure as an innovator. Innovators will not fail, they have just found one million ways that won’t work. Process already lies the largest value in the innovation.” In a nutshell, being “passionate and persistent” have made Or a successful innovator. |
