Facile Synthesis of Cu-Doped TiO<sub>2</sub> Particles for Accelerated Visible Light-Driven Antiviral and Antibacterial Inactivation
Zachary S. Campbell, C. Roland Ghareeb, Steven Baro, Jacob P. Mauthe, Gail McColgan, Aram Amassian, Frank Scholle, Reza A. Ghiladi, Milad Abolhasani, Elizabeth C. Dickey
Abstract
High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide In this work, we present a facile and scalable hydrolysis-based route for the synthesis of copper-doped TiO 2 particles for highly effective light-activated antiviral and antibacterial applications. The performance of the synthesized Cu-doped TiO 2 particles is then evaluated using solution-phase antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation assays. We demonstrate that the Cu-doped TiO 2 particles can successfully inactivate a wide range of pathogens with exposure to light for 90 min, including bacteria ranging from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (99.9999%, ∼6 log units) to Klebsiella pneumoniae (99.93%, ∼3.3 log units), and viruses including feline calicivirus (99.94%, ∼3.4 log units) and HCoV-229E (99.996%, ∼4.6 log units), with the particles demonstrating excellent robustness toward photobleaching. Furthermore, a spray-coated polymer film, loaded with the synthesized Cu-doped TiO 2 particles achieves inactivation of methicillin-resistant S. aureus up to 99.998% (∼4.8 log units). The presented results provide a clear advance forward in the use of metal-doped TiO 2 for aPDI applications, including the scalable synthesis (kg/day) of well-characterized and robust particles, their facile incorporation into a nontoxic, photostable coating that may be easily and cheaply applied to a multitude of surfaces, and a broad efficacy against drug-resistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, as well as against enveloped and nonenveloped viruses.