Peter Tsai

Peter Tsai (蔡秉燚; born February 6, 1952) is a Taiwanese-American inventor and material scientist who is best known for inventing and patenting improved meltblown filtration manufacturing techniques, used in respirators (like N95 respirators, which is a 1995 NIOSH standard made to address the shortcomings of USBM standards).^[1][a] He is an expert in the field of nonwoven fabric.^[5] Tsai was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee, but ended his retirement during the COVID-19 pandemic to research mask and respirator sterilization.^[a][6][7]

Early life and education

Tsai grew up on his family's farm in the Qingshui District of Taichung, Taiwan and graduated from Taichung Municipal Cingshuei Senior High School.^[8] He studied chemical fibre engineering at the Provincial Taipei Institute of Technology, now known as National Taipei University of Technology.^[9][10]

Career

After graduating college he went to work at the Taiwan Textile Research Institute before finding work in a dyeing and finishing plant. He then went abroad to the United States for postgraduate work at Kansas State University in 1981, completing over 500 credits in a variety of subjects including mathematics, physics, and chemistry.^[3]

After receiving his doctorate in materials science, Tsai went to teach and work at the University of Tennessee.^[3][6] In total, he holds 12 U.S. patents and over 20 commercial license agreements.^[6] Tsai retired from the University of Tennessee in 2019.^[10] He was a professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering.^[6]

In 2020, Tsai came out of retirement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he has been working with the scientific collective N95DECON on ways to decontaminate N95 masks.^[7][11]

Meltblown Charge Techniques

In 1992 while at the University of Tennessee, Tsai led a team attempting to improve electrostatic filtration manufacturing.^[3][7] The material consists of both positive and negative charges, which are better able to attract particles — such as dust, bacteria and viruses — and trap them by polarization before they can pass through the mask.^[3][4] It was patented in the U.S. in 1995.^{[4][6][7][12]}

Tsai continued to do work into mask technology and in 2018 he developed a new technique which doubled the filtration capacity of medical masks.^[10]

See also

• List of Taiwanese inventions and discoveries
• Taiwanese Americans
• List of Taiwanese Americans

Notes

1. Note: In spite of the claims made by sources cited in this biography on Tsai's N95 involvement, please refer to the N95 respirator article for more information. The N95 is a 42 CFR Part 84 standard, effective July 10, 1995. Citations to support Tsai's work follow:^[2][3][4]