From the natural element silver<br/>to the leading hygiene, protection<br/>and freshness technology

Earth‘s antimicrobial

From the natural element silver
to the leading hygiene, protection
and freshness technology

Man has counted on silver for centuries - not only as a material for jewellery or articles of daily use, but, above all, because of the bacteriostatic effect of the element silver. In the early modern age for example milk was preserved by using silver coins.

Today, silver is used as an effective bacteriostatic agent in the most diverse fields, such as cosmetics or medicine. Ranging from silver-containing gauze to overalls metallised with silver, which are used in neurodermatitis treatments - today, modern medical technologies are unthinkable without silver. For many years the RUDOLF GROUP too has intensively engaged in the modern fields of application of silver and has found innovate solutions.

SILVERPLUS® unique technology provides hygienic and fresh effects of the element silver to impregnations, coatings or as an aftertreating agent to many substrates or application processes.

SILVERPLUS® applications

Initial textile finish of hotel laundry, hospital laundry, sports articles, shoes, workwear, tropical clothing bed linen, leased laundry
Hygienic and fresh functions in membranes
Direct coatings with ECO-VENT®
Care products for shoes
Post-impregnations (wash-in)

Maximum effects with minimum comsumption of resources

SILVERPLUS® transfers the element silver into a silver compound which has been applied to microstructured substrates by means of highly innovative coating procedures. One gram of microstructured SILVERPLUS® active ingredient has a superficial area of ca. 600,000 cm². The advantage of the enlargement of the superficial area is that the consumption of resources can be minimised by the factor 100 compared with metallic silver. At the same time, the effects are maximised, similar to the mode of action of platinum in automotive exhaust catalysts.

Due to this highly innovative procedure a virtually infinite deposit is created from which highly effective positive silver ions are set free in small (some ppm) exactly dosed quantities whenever needed, i.e. in the presence of moisture.

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Setting free silver ions in the presence of moisture

The highly effective silver ion technology with triple effect

Due to the triple effect mechanism of SILVERPLUS® many odour-causing bacteria cannot adapt to the effect of silver ions. The antimicrobial effect of the natural element silver is exclusively based on free silver ions. Due to a triple effect mechanism silver ions with a positive charge have bacteriostatic effects.

SILVERPLUS® is, therefore, capable of contributing to stop odour-causing bacteria to thus prevent infections in clinics and hospitals, which are e. g. caused by the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus strain (MRSA), from being transmitted*. It is assumend that only in Germany approximately 15, 000 people who are treated in hospitals, die from infections, which are caused by antibiotic-resistant germs (such as MRSA). SILVERPLUS® may contribute in preventing further infections in hospitals*.

The advantage of the SILVERPLUS®-technology is that due to their relatively low solubility, silver ions are set free economically from a chemical equilibrium. Thus the important antimicrobial active ingredient is used very effectively, and resources are safeguarded.