Li-doped ZnO nanowires on flexible carbon fibers as highly efficient hybrid antibacterial structures

In this paper, Li-doped ZnO nanowires were grown on flexible carbon fiber substrates by hydrothermal route to create hybrid antibacterial structures. We have reported the synthesis, characterization and anti-bacterial activity of these hybrid structures which are made up of ZnO nanowires incorporated with various amounts of Li (0.3%, 0.5%, 1%, 3%, and 5%). Structural, morphological, optical, and elemental properties of the samples were scrutinized by using X-ray diffractometry (XRD), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. The anti-bacterial effect of the hybrid structures against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus was tested by colony counting method. From the results, the antibacterial effect of Li-doped ZnO/CF against both E. coli and S. aureus was observed to considerably high in all samples. It was also seen that the Li addition sig-nificantly improves the antibacterial effect of ZnO nanowires. Doping ZnO with 3% Li resulted in best an-tibacterial efficiency on both E. coli (99.3% inhibition) and S. aureus (98.7% inhibition) among all samples. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.