Durability of Antimicrobial Claims in Photopolymer Devices: Depletion, Fouling, Cleaning, Resistance and Test Design

Antimicrobial performance is often reported from a clean, newly prepared surface under a single laboratory protocol, while real photopolymer devices experience extraction, sorption, wear, protein fouling, repeated cleaning, disinfectant exposure, humidity changes and microbial adaptation. This review defines antimicrobial durability as preservation of a specified effect across a declared use-state history, not as a one-time log-reduction result. It separates releasable, contact-active and anti-adhesive mechanisms; identifies depletion, masking, surface reconstruction and cleaning damage as distinct failure modes; and proposes a non-compensatory qualification matrix linking antimicrobial efficacy to chemistry, surface state, biofilm challenge, cleaning cycles, mechanical integrity and resistance-selection risk. The central conclusion is that an antimicrobial claim is durable only when the claimed mechanism and effect remain demonstrated after the relevant conditioning sequence and when loss of activity, leachables and selection pressure are explicitly bounded.

ER-259 · Version 0.2.