Issue 44, 2017

Photoactive antimicrobial nanomaterials

Abstract

Pathogenic microbes cause infections and are excellent at adapting to the disinfection strategies that address their biochemistry. The growth in number of drug resistant superbugs is alarming, and has attracted attention to alternative solutions. In recent years, researchers have put effort into designing nanomaterials with activatable antimicrobial properties initiated by light irradiation. The underlying mechanisms of these nanomaterials' photoactivatable antimicrobial effect may vary from reactive oxygen species generation, to heat production or pH variation in procedures like photocatalysis, photodynamic therapy, photothermal lysis and photoinduced acidification. In this article, we review the photoactive nanomaterial solutions for fighting against microbial diseases, especially bacterial infections. This Review shines light on the fundamental principles, important developments, promising applications, and limitations of current technologies as well as open questions that these methods may answer or help to answer.

Graphical abstract: Photoactive antimicrobial nanomaterials

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
10 Jul 2017
Accepted
06 Oct 2017
First published
09 Oct 2017

J. Mater. Chem. B, 2017,5, 8631-8652

Photoactive antimicrobial nanomaterials

Y. Feng, L. Liu, J. Zhang, H. Aslan and M. Dong, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2017, 5, 8631 DOI: 10.1039/C7TB01860F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements