A photo catalyst of cuprous oxide anchored MXene nanosheet for dramatic enhancement of synergistic antibacterial ability

Ti 3 C 2 T x (MXene) as a two-dimensional material has attracted numerous attentions in photocatalysis and antibacterial, and the effectiveness of MXene for photocatalysis triggered antibacterial is in urgent need of development. Herein, we synthesized a novel cuprous oxide (Cu 2 O) anchored MXene nanosheet. Cu 2 O nanospheres can be uniformly anchored on the surface of MXene firmly due to the electrostatic effect between single-layer MXene and Cu 2 O nanospheres. In comparison with MXene, Cu 2 O and mixture (MXene and Cu 2 O), Cu 2 O/MXene nanosheet exhibits an excellent antibacterial activity against S. aureus and P. aeruginosa , whose bacteriostasis efficiencies sharply increased to 97.04% and 95.59%, respectively. Photoluminescence spectroscopy reveals that the incorporation of MXene and Cu 2 O can effectively prevent the recombination of electron-hole pairs of Cu 2 O and present a high photocatalytic disinfection. Single-layer MXene with large surface area accepts electrons from Cu 2 O, leading to abundant electrons on the surface of MXene, which provide better charge transfer between bacteria and Cu 2 O/MXene nanosheets. In addition, density functional theory calculations were used to investigate an optimized band structure of Cu 2 O-MXene as well as its strong electronic interactions, which are essential for photocatalysis and ROS generation. Finite element method further revealed that MXene promoted an enhancement of surface plasmon resonance to generate ROS on the surface of Cu 2 O/MXene. Furthermore, Cu 2 O/MXene shows a synergistic antibacterial effect of MXene accelerating photoelectron transportation, Cu 2 O antimicrobial and photocatalysis, elevated ROS production ability, and surface plasmon resonance action on the surface of Cu 2 O/MXene.