Sports footwear and clothing firm Under Armour has used its expertise in high-performance textiles to produce a facemask designed for intense exercise and elite sports training.

The Under Armour Sportsmask features a unique, three-layer model engineered to offer protection during strenuous fitness training and for athletes during sports.

The first layer is made of spacer fabric, which is light but has air pockets for structure, so it stays off the mouth and nose for better airflow.

The middle layer is made out of open-cell foam, which makes it breathable, letting air through but making it hard for moisture and sweat to pass.

The final layer is made out of Under Armour's stretchable Iso-Chill fabric, which is designed to feel cool against the skin and is treated with PROTX2, a non-metal anti-microbial technology which inhibits growth of bacteria on the mask.

PROTX2 has been shown in laboratory tests to destroy COVID-19, and is being reviewed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to confirm the efficacy of the substance as it is applied to the Sportsmask.

Under Armour also has a patent pending on its design and construction of the mask.

According to Kyle Blakely, vice president of materials innovation at Under Armour, the seeds for the SPortsmask were planted in mid-March, when Under Armour began manufacturing face masks designed by its innovation team and distributing millions of units of PPE to health care and community organisations to help fight the spread of COVID-19.

“As soon as we finalized the design of our face mask for PPE, we dove straight into the innovation process of optimizing a mask for performance," Blakely said.

"We knew our athletes would need us to come through quickly with a solve to aid their return to training, one that would put health and safety first and adhere to current CDC guidelines.”