Conjugating HA bundles with ZIF-8 for catalytic degradation of tetracycline and antibacterial capacity

The overused of antibiotics had led to major environmental issues and drug-resistant bacteria, which inevitably harmed the environment and public health. In this work, in order to obtain environmentally friendly bi-functional materials to combat with residual antibiotics and bacterial contamination, ZIF-8, a typical Zn based zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZnZIF) with excellent chemical stability, was conjugated to hydroxyapatite nanowire bundles (HAnBs) by a simple in-situ synthesis. The obtained ZnZIFs@HAnBs was characterized by SEM, EDS, XPS, FT-IR, XRD and BET. The effects of catalysts, catalyst dosage, TC initial concentration, PMS concentration and pH on TC degradation were investigated. Notably, ZnZIFs@HAnBs (94.0%) exhibited excellent degradation effect of tetracycline (TC) within 15   min, which was 1.7 and 5.2 times than that of ZIF-8 (55.9%) and HAnBs (18.1%) under optimal conditions, respectively. Moreover, after recycling 10 times, the degradation rate still more than 86.8%. The degradation mechanism was confirmed by free radical quenching experiment coupling with electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and the 1 O 2 and O 2 •- were the major reactive oxygen species in TC degradation. Furthermore, it presented excellent antibacterial activity (95.0%) against E. coli and S. aureus , which was attributed to the synergistic effect of sustained release of Zn 2+ and phosphate in ZnZIF@HAnBs. In summary, an eco-friendly bi-functional materials of HA nanowire bundles could be synthesized by simple strategy, and it could be applied in the fields of environmental remediation, as well as in treatment of antibiotic and bacterial pollution.