Single Tungsten Atom-Modified Cotton Fabrics for Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Degradation and Antibacterial Activity

Various single-atom materials exhibit distinguished performances in catalysis and biology. To boost their applications, single-atom-based strategies are highly demanded to exhibit repeatable functions on advanced wearable substrates. However, single-atom approaches are rarely reported to anchor on wearable materials, i.e., widely applied cotton fabrics. Here, we developed a simple method of loading uniformly dispersed single tungsten atoms on cotton via ordinary direct-dye processing to exhibit superior sustainable functions. The single sites of tungsten atom centers are constructed by binding oxygen-coordinated single tungsten atom on the cotton fabric surface via -COOH groups. Consequently, the band gap of single sites decreases significantly to 2.75 from 3.03 eV. Therefore, the single-site-modified cotton exhibits excellent visible-light-driven (>420 nm) photocatalytic degradation efficiency of organic dyes, which exceeds other reported cotton-based materials by nearly two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the single-site-modified cotton also exhibits great antibacterial performance due to reactive oxygen species. Moreover, the cotton with anchored single sites possesses great washing-resistance ability during 20 laundry cycles under soap-washing conditions. After recycling, the single sites on cotton have no obvious changes in the microstructure, which demonstrates the success of our sustainable strategy of single sites anchored on cotton. The single-site technique can be extended to many other elemental atoms on various wearable devices, providing a playground for functional material communities.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the exceptional catalytic and antibacterial performance of cotton modified with single tungsten atoms. The single-site modified cotton shows superior degradation efficiency of organic dyes under visible light and excellent washing-resistance ability.