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 masks.[1][2][3] He is an expert in the field of nonwoven fabric.[4] Tsai was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee, but ended his retirement during the COVID-19 pandemic to research N95 mask sterilization.[5][6]
Tsai grew up on his family's farm in the Qingshui District of Taichung, Taiwan and graduated from Taichung Municipal Cingshuei Senior High School.[7] He studied chemical fibre engineering at the Provincial Taipei Institute of Technology, now known as National Taipei University of Technology.[8][9]
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.[2]
After receiving his doctorate in materials science, Tsai went to teach and work at the University of Tennessee.[2][5] In total, he holds 12 U.S. patents and over 20 commercial license agreements.[5] Tsai retired from the University of Tennessee in 2019.[9] He was a professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering.[5]
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.[6][10]
In 1992 while at the University of Tennessee, Tsai led a team attempting to improve electrostatic filtration manufacturing.[2][6] 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.[2][3] It was patented in the U.S. in 1995.[3][5][6][11]
Tsai continued to do work into mask technology and in 2018 he developed a new technique which doubled the filtration capacity of medical masks.[9]