Journal
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
Volume 398, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2020.125609
Keywords
Synergistic antibacterial; Mechanical bactericidal; Long-term antimicrobial; Biomimetic hierarchical structures; Lotus leaf surface
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation of China [51775232, 51803212, 51875240]
- Science and Technology Development Plan Project of Jilin Province [20190201155JC]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
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Antibiotics, a power tool to combat pathogenic bacterial infection, have experienced their inability to kill drug-resistant bacteria due to the development of antibiotic resistance. As an alternative, nanostructured, mechanical bactericidal surfaces may hold promise in killing bacteria without triggering antimicrobial resistance; however, accumulation of dead bacteria would greatly reduce their antimicrobial activity. In this study, for the first time we report a surprising discovery that the lotus leaf, well known for its superhydrophobicity, has demonstrated not only strong repelling effect against bacteria but also bactericidal activity via a cell-rupturing mechanism. Inspired by this unexpected finding, we subsequently designed and prepared a hierarchically structured surface, which was rendered superhydrophobic (water contact angle: 174 degrees; roll-off angle:< 1 degrees) upon surface perfluorination. The hierarchically structured surface has displayed remarkable synergistic antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli: while the majority of the bacteria (> 99%) were repelled from the surface (non-fouling), those tenacious bacteria that managed to be in touch of the surface were physically killed completely. Compared to a conventional superhydrophobic surface (non-fouling to some extent, but no bacteria-killing) or a mechanical bactericidal surface (bacteria-killing but not bacteria-repelling), our new structured surface has the great advantage in maintaining long-term effectiveness in antimicrobial activity based entirely on physical mechanism.
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