The present invention describes the development of a low-power consuming, self-sterilizing fabric heater by printing of custom  developed thick film conductive silver ink formulations on fabric substrates. The fabric heater device has been integrated with a  stopgap face mask having a reusable cartridge, in which the cartridge comprises of a self-sterilizing fabric layer in addition to other  filter layers for annihilating pathogens by resistive heating, enabling on-line protection at 70 degree C as well as offline protection at 120 degree C.  The design of the self-sterilizing fabric heater has been optimized for energy efficient heating with full and partial coverage designs of  heating element over fabric substrate. The sterilization temperature for fabric heater has been achieved through a DC voltage source  with less than 0.24 W/cm2 power consumption by fine-tuning the resistance and thickness of heating element printed on fabric  substrate.