Visible light antibacterial potential of cement mortar incorporating Cu-ZnO/g-C3N4 nanocomposites

In this work, a hybrid Cu-ZnO/g-C3N4 nanocomposite was synthesized and introduced to fabricate photocatalytic cement mortars by internal mixing. The bactericidal properties of the photocatalytic mortars were explored by using E. coli, S. aureus and P. aeruginosa as a bacteria test strain. The results showed that the Cu-ZnO/g-C3N4 nanocomposite had an enhanced harvesting of visible light energy and exhibited excellent stability during the photocatalytic process, which favored a long-term usage performance. The sterilizing efficiency of the photocatalytic cement mortars improved with an increasing content of Cu-ZnO/g-C3N4 nanocomposites. A possible bactericidal mechanism was proposed based on the active species trapping experiments, verifying that the photogenerated holes (h(+)) and O-2(-) radicals were the main active species.

Automated summary

In this study, a Cu-ZnO/g-C3N4 nanocomposite was synthesized and used to fabricate photocatalytic cement mortars. The bactericidal properties of the photocatalytic mortars were explored, and it was found that the nanocomposite had enhanced visible light energy harvesting and exhibited excellent stability. The sterilizing efficiency of the photocatalytic cement mortars increased with an increasing content of the nanocomposite, and the proposed bactericidal mechanism involved photogenerated holes (h(+)) and O-2(-) radicals as the main active species.