Galvanic corrosion-based antibacterial bimetallic nanoparticles produced by cylindrical gas aggregation source
Abstrakt
Antibacterial coatings represent a highly important class of materials in protecting patients and combating the spread of infectious diseases. Because of this, the development of novel strategies allowing reliable production of such materials as well as strategies for the enhancement of their efficiency against different types of bacteria is of paramount importance.
Concerning the antibacterial efficiency of metal-based materials, the principal challenge is their ability to release sufficiently high amounts of biocide metal ions. From this point of view, an interesting option is based on galvanic corrosion.
Although galvanic corrosion is usually described as a negative process in which one of the metals in bimetallic compounds is corroded, the effect of corrosion may be used to increase the number of ions of the metal needed for the assurance of a strong antibacterial effect. To demonstrate the positive effect of galvanic corrosion on the release rate of bactericidal copper ions, Cu and heterogeneous bi-metallic Ag/Cu nanoparticles (Ag/Cu ratio 1:1 as determined by EDX) were deposited onto polypropylene and poly(ethylene terephthalate) meshes by means of novel gas aggregation sources of nanoparticles that utilizes a cylindrical post-magnetron [1].
Based on the measurement of the kinetics of the copper ions released in water by atomic absorption spectroscope, it was observed that the presence of Ag caused an increase in the number of released Cu ions by approximately 50%. Concerning the fact that copper is more anodic, i.e., less stable, in the Ag-Cu pair, such enhancement can be ascribed to galvanic corrosion.
This result on bimetallic nanoparticles, which, as far as we know, has not been reported before, thus paves the way for the rational development of advanced nanostructured bi-metallic antibacterial materials.