Omnipotent antibacterial cotton fabrics with superhydrophobic and photothermal properties

Due to the outbreak of global public health emergency, antibacterial fabrics such as face masks are in great demand. However, common antibacterial fabrics cannot kill bacteria in minutes and they are easy to be contaminated and lost biological activity. In this work, omnipotent antibacterial cotton fabrics with superhydrophobic and photothermal properties are developed by the combination of dopamine with copper sulfide (CuS) and silver nanoparticles on cotton fabrics, and post-modification with PDMS. The prepared PDA/CuS/Ag/ PDMS composite fabrics were characterized by FE-SEM, XRD, EDS, ATR-FTIR and water contact angle. The photothermal antimicrobial properties of the fabrics were evaluated with Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coil) under near-infrared light (NIR) illumination or not. The results showed that the obtained superhydrophobic PDA/CuS/Ag/PDMS composite fabrics had excellent water repellence and self-cleaning effect. Regardless of NIR irradiation or not, PDA/CuS/Ag/PDMS composite fabrics possessed high antibacterial activity against S. aureus and E. coil, which proves their omnipotent antibacterial property.