Silver-nanowire-modified fabrics for wide-spectrum antimicrobial applications
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Silver-nanowire-modified fabrics for wide-spectrum antimicrobial applications Doga Doganay1, Akin Kanicioglu2, Sahin Coskun3, Gulcin Akca2, Husnu Emrah Unalan1,a) 1
Department Department 3 Department a) Address all 2
of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara 06800, Turkey of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Gazi University, Ankara 06500, Turkey of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir 26040, Turkey correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected]
Received: 18 August 2018; accepted: 20 November 2018
Antimicrobial textiles received considerable attention due to public health and personal hygiene concerns. On the other hand, pathogenic microorganisms gain immunity against existing antibacterial products. For these reasons, new and stronger antibacterial agents need to be developed immediately. In this work, silver nanowires (Ag NWs) were decorated onto conventional fabrics via facile and scalable dip and dry method. Antimicrobial activity of the nanowire-decorated fabrics was investigated against a Gram-positive coccus (Staphylococcus aureus), a Gram-negative bacillus (Escherichia coli), a Gram-positive and spore-forming bacillus (Bacillus cereus), and a yeast-like fungus (Candida albicans) via disk diffusion and time–dependent killing methods. The effect of Ag NW content was investigated, and the decorated fabrics showed promising antibacterial activity even with a small amount of Ag NW decoration (0.095 mg/cm2). Moreover, decorated fabrics maintained their activity for 24 h. This work shows that Ag NW-modified fabrics can be used as antimicrobial textiles against a wide spectrum of bacteria.
Introduction The increased spreading rate of epidemics as a result of a growing number of international and domestic flights as well as the population of countries, in particular cities, forced people to use both public and personal antimicrobial products [1]. Since pathogenic microorganisms become more and more resistive against existing products, improvements to the antimicrobial agents are necessary [2, 3]. These antimicrobial agents are being used in diverse areas such as hygiene gels and surgical devices [4, 5]. Due to large surface area and high moisture sensitivity, microorganisms can easily multiply on fabrics. It is known that some bacteria can reach over 1 million cells from a single living cell within 7 h [6]. These microorganisms not only cause hygiene problems and undesired odors, but also reduce the mechanical strength of the fabrics. Because of these reasons, antimicrobial textiles are extensively researched and also commercialized [7, 8, 9]. Some materials are known for their natural antimicrobial activity. For example, silver (Ag) has been used for its superior antimicrobial efficacy since ancient times, even before the
ª Materials Research Society 2019
realization of microbes [10]. Initially, bulk Ag and fibers coated with Ag thin films were used in the textile industry. However, the use of bulk A
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