Light-assisted rapid sterilization by a hydrogel incorporated with Ag3PO4/MoS2 composites for efficient wound disinfection

Bacterial infection is one of the serious problems during wound healing. Antibiotics and traditional antibacterial treatment can produce side effects, such as bacterial resistance, cell toxicity, during the long-term interaction with bacteria. Therefore, developing new antibacterial materials and methods for rapid and safe disinfection in wound healing is important. This work fabricated a hybrid hydrogel incorporated with Ag3PO4/MoS2 composites for rapid sterilization during wound healing. This hydrogel exhibited a superior antibacterial activity within 5 min by co-irradiation of 660 nm visible light (VL) and 808 nm near infrared (NIR) light due to the synergistic effects of both photodynamic antibacterial and photothermal antibacterial treatments. In addition, the antibacterial hydrogel could promote the wound healing compared with the pure hydrogel and medical gauze (MG) and cause no noticeable organ abnormalities in rats during the wound healing process.