Plasmonic silver loaded hybrid Bi-Ag nanoalloys for highly efficient disinfection by enhancing photothermal performance and interface capability

Environmental pollution caused by bacterial infection poses a serious threat to human society. The emergence of high-performance antibacterial agents needs to be continuedly explored. Herein, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) silver-loaded hybrid photothermal-catalyst Bi-Ag nanoparticles (Bi-Ag NPs) were designed to solve the bacterial problems. The Bi-Ag NPs can effectively utilize their advantages to maximize the use of light energy. Meanwhile, the localized surface plasmon resonance and hybrid structure can be employed as a thermal reflector that not only relieves effectively the recombination of photonic electrons to promote photothermocatalytic activity but also the photothermal conversion efficiency was expanded to nearly 1.5 times compared to the single Bi NPs. Interestingly, the hybrid Bi-Ag NPs exhibit greatly fascinating ability in the bacterial capture, which is more conducive to the elimination of bacteria owing to the strong photoactivation effect at a high contact interface between bacteria and the Bi-Ag NPs. The synthesized Bi-Ag NPs performed the photothermal-catalytic antibacterial and purification, and further provided an inspired insight for the investigation of photothermalcatalytic nanomaterials in environmental fields.

Automated summary

This study designed surface plasmon resonance (SPR) silver-loaded hybrid photothermal-catalyst Bi-Ag nanoparticles (Bi-Ag NPs) to solve the environmental pollution caused by bacterial infection. The Bi-Ag NPs effectively utilize light energy and have good photothermocatalytic activity and bacterial capture ability. The research provides inspired insights for the investigation of photothermal-catalytic nanomaterials in environmental fields.