  The wide use of surgical masks has been proven effective for mitigating the
spread of respiration diseases, such as COVID-19, alongside social distance
control, vaccines, and other efforts. With the newly reported variants, such as
Delta and Omicron, a higher spread rate had been found compared to the initial
strains. People might get infected even by inhaling fewer loading of viruses.
More frequent sterilization of surgical masks is needed to protect the wearers.
However, it is challenging to sterilize the commodity surgical masks with a
fast and effective method. Herein, we reported the sterilization of the
SARS-CoV-2 viruses within an ultra-short time, while retaining the mask
performance. Silver thin film is coated on commercial polyimide film by
physical vapor deposition and patterned by laser scribing to form a Joule
heating electrode. Another layer of the gold thin film was coated onto the
opposite side of the device to promote the uniformity of the Joule heating
through nano-heat transfer regulation. As a result, the surgical mask can be
heated to inactivation temperature within a short time and with high
uniformity. By Joule-heating the surgical mask with the temperature at 90
{\deg}C for 3 minutes, the inactivation of the SARS-CoV-2 showed an efficacy of
99.89%. Normal commodity surgical masks can be sterilized faster, more
frequently, and efficiently against SARS-CoV-2 viruses and the new invariants.
