Intrinsic carbon defects induced nickel phosphate/carbon photocatalyst for high performance bacterial disinfection

Developing new alternative antibacterial nanomaterials is becoming an emergent need to resolve infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In this work, we successfully developed a series of defective Ni(PO3)(2) modified carbon spheres (D-NiPO-C-x) nanocomposites for light-triggered photocatalytic destruction of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, such as Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. The as-prepared D-NiPO-C-0.4 (with quality of carbon spheres of 400 mg) at a concentration of 100 mu g/mL exhibit antibacterial efficiencies of 98.3 % and 71.9% for S. aureus and E. coli, respectively, under the light irradiation of 70 W halide lamp for 60 min. The activity is comparable to the standard photocatalyst P25. By combining the density functional theory calculations with experimental results, the effectively charge transfer from Ni(PO3)(2) to defective carbon was responsible for the high antibacterial performance. Thus, our work makes an important contribution to understand the origin of the high antibacterial activity of defective carbon-based catalysts, with heteroatom doping perhaps being of significant importance to enhance the photocatalytic antibacterial performance.

Automated summary

This study successfully developed a new type of photocatalytic antibacterial nanomaterials, which can effectively destroy infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The charge transfer between Ni(PO3)(2) and defective carbon in the nanomaterials was found to be one of the reasons for their high antibacterial performance.