Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

Multiaction antibacterial nanofibrous membranes fabricated by electrospinning: an excellent system for antibacterial applications

Yiguang Wu1, Weijie Jia1, Qi An1, Yuanfeng Liu2, Jinchun Chen2 and Guangtao Li1

Show affiliations


In this paper, novel multiaction antibacterial nanofibrous membranes containing apatite, Ag, AgBr and TiO2 as four active components were fabricated by an electrospinning technique. In this antibacterial membrane, each component serves a different function: the hydroxyapatite acts as the adsorption material for capturing bacteria, the Ag nanoparticles act as the release-active antibacterial agent, the AgBr nanoparticles act as the visible sensitive and release-active antibacterial agent, and the TiO2 acts as the UV sensitive antibacterial material and substrate for other functional components. Using E. coli as the typical testing organism, such multicomponent membranes exhibit excellent antimicrobial activity under UV light, visible light or in a dark environment. The significant antibacterial properties may be due to the synergetic action of the four major functional components, and the unique porous structure and high surface area of the nanofibrous membrane. It takes only 20 min for the bacteria to be completely (99.9%) destroyed under visible light. Even in a dark environment, about 50 min is enough to kill all of the bacteria. Compared to the four component system in powder form reported previously, the addition of the electrospun membrane could significantly improve the antibacterial inactivation of E. coli under the same evaluation conditions. Besides the superior antimicrobial capability, the permanence of the antibacterial activity of the prepared free-standing membranes was also demonstrated in repeated applications.


PACS

87.85.Qr Nanotechnologies-design

68.37.Hk Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) (including EBIC)

68.43.Mn Adsorption kinetics

61.46.Df Structure of nanocrystals and nanoparticles ("colloidal" quantum dots but not gate-isolated embedded quantum dots)

81.16.-c Methods of nanofabrication and processing

68.37.Lp Transmission electron microscopy (TEM)

Subjects

Surfaces, interfaces and thin films

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 24 (17 June 2009)

Received 12 January 2009, in final form 27 March 2009

Published 26 May 2009



View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.