Composition-Dependent Antimicrobial Ability of Full-Spectrum AuxAg25-x Alloy Nanoclusters

Alloying is an efficient chemistry to diversify the properties of metal nanoparticles; however, the atomic-level understandings of the composition-dependent physicochemical properties and their related biological performance are presently lacking. Here, we developed a full spectrum of alloy metal nanoclusters (NCs), AuxAg25-x(MHA)(18) (MHA = 6-mercaptohexanoic acid) with x = 0-25, and investigated their composition-dependent antimicrobial performance. Interestingly, we observed a U-shape antimicrobial behavior of AuxAg25-x(MHA)(18) NCs, where the alloy NCs showed decreased antimicrobial ability instead of the common trend of increasing. Detailed atomic-level characterizations of the AuAg NCs suggest that the decreased performance of alloy NCs is due to their enhanced stability after alloying, which can deactivate their capability in generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) that can kill the bacteria. More interestingly, the transition point of the antimicrobial performance was only obtained with our full-spectrum AuxAg25-x(MHA)(18) NCs, which indicates the importance of exploring the composition-dependent properties and application performance in a full-spectrum composition range. A library of full-spectrum alloy NCs also provides a good platform to investigate other composition-dependent physicochemical and biological properties of metal NCs.