Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• While disinfectants help keep bacteria and viruses at bay, they need constant reapplication and can release harmful chemicals into the environment.
• A new plastic film inspired by the wings of insects uses thousands of nanopillars, placed 60 nanometers apart, to essentially stretch apart viruses on contact, killing them or damaging them so they can replicate.
• While the authors report a 94 percent success rate against human parainfluenza virus type 3 (hPIV-3), more research needs to be conducted on other types of viruses.

Communicable infectious diseases kill millions of people every year, and if endless Lysol commercials have taught us anything, it’s best to keep spraying (and paying) for disinfectants to keep these deadly diseases at bay. But what if there was another way?

Scientists at RMIT University in Australia have created a nanotextured plastic film that can kill viruses on contact—no disinfectant needed. In a study published in the journal Advanced Science, the research team tested their antiviral film on human parainfluenza virus type 3 (hPIV-3), which typically infects the lungs causing bronchiolitis, bronchitis, and even pneumonia. The film successfully killed (or damaged irreparably) 94 percent of the viruses with which it came into contact after just one hour. Successfully mass producing these films could help hospitals stay clean, or permanently sanitize smartphones and other high-touch surfaces.

“Nature offers examples of bacteria-free surfaces. Take the water-repelling wings of cicadas and dragonflies. While these wings are self-cleaning, they act less by repelling bacteria and more as natural bactericides,” Elena Ivanova, senior author of the study from RMIT, wrote in The Conversation. “Experiments my colleagues and I did with gold-coated wings confirmed this bacteria-killing effect is not driven by surface chemistry, but rather by topography.”

This topography includes what the authors call nanopillars (structures just billionths of a meter in size), which mimic the topography of these insects’ wings. These microscopic pillars are densely packed, with only 60 nanometers between them (a human hair is between 80,000 to 100,000 nanometers wide, for comparison), and it turns out that this compact structure is key.

“By tweaking the spacing and height of the nanopillars, we discovered how tightly they are packed together is far more important than how tall they are for breaking viruses apart,” Samson Mah, a co-author of the study and Ph.D. candidate at RMIT, said in a press statement. “When the nanopillars are closer together, more of them can press on the same virus at once, stretching its outer shell past breaking point.”

In the study, the authors noted that while 60 nanometers worked wonders at killing off the unwanted hPIV-3 virus, when the nanopillars were stretched further apart, the film’s killing power waned and effectively turned off completely at 200 nanometers. But these films have major advantages over disinfectants—they’re continually effective (meaning they don’t have to be reapplied over and over again), they don’t harm the environment, and they don’t contribute to antimicrobial resistance.

Developing this nanostructure is one thing, but the authors also needed to find a way to make it lightweight, flexible, and cost-effective. In a previous study, Ivanova and her team developed a similar spiked surface using silicon, but its inflexibility limited its possible applications. This time, the team opted for an acrylic film. At macroscales (such as the human hand), the film remains smooth to the touch, but at the nanoscales in which viruses operate, it’s an inhospitable and deadly landscape.

So, are we about to just shrink wrap hospitals and portable devices in this stuff and call it a day? Well, not yet. Researchers still need to do more tests on curved surfaces, which—by their geometric nature—spread the pillars apart. Additionally, the material (while durable) does degrade over time. The researchers also need to test their film against other kinds of viruses, especially smaller ones that aren’t enveloped in a fatty outer membrane in the same way as hPIV‑3.

But the good news? It’s cheap to make.

“We think this texturing is a strong candidate for everyday use,” Ivanova said in a press statement, “and we’re ready to partner with companies to refine it for large‑scale manufacturing.”