Facile synthesis and antibacterial applications of cuprous oxide/bovine serum albumin hierarchical nanocomposite particles

A facile method to prepare cuprous oxide/bovine serum albumin (Cu2O/BSA) hierarchical nanocomposite particles (NCPs) through imitating biomineralization is presented. BSA acted as the structure-directing agents, guiding the nucleation, growth and assembly of Cu(OH)(2) at binding sites to construct the hierarchical structure and then Cu2O/BSA NCPs were achieved. The synthesized nanocomposite with hierarchical structure exhibited excellent antibacterial performance. The products obtained were characterized with XRD, TEM, FTIR, EDX and XPS to investigate the formation mechanism of Cu2O/BSA hierarchical structure. Cu2O/BSA NCPs with size of 20-50 nm built up by several 6-7 nm Cu2O nanocrystals with BSA showed better antibacterial performance in the comparative experiments, which was attributed to the special structure and good biocompatibility of the Cu2O/BSA NCPs. And the possible mechanism was presented to explain the excellent antibacterial properties of Cu2O/BSA NCPs.