Ultrasonic assisted surface modified cellulose: Photocatalytic effect for the disinfection of microbes using porphyrin dyes

The photocatalytic effects of cellulosic fabric (C) through surface modification by incorporating TiO2 (T), and three different porphyrin (P1, P2, and P3) dyes and compared its disinfection ability in detail in this work. The surface modification is done by dip coating via an ultrasonic process in an ultrasonicator bath model WUCD22H. The frequency and power used in the ultrasonic bath are 30 kHz and 100 W, respectively. UV-Vis spectra, SEM, EDS, XPS, and XRD analysis have confirmed the surface modification. The virus was degrading and destroying by the abilities of the surface-modified cellulose confirmed by the RT-PCR. In this work, the molecular biology techniques used in the experiment is an RT-PCR method, the RT-PCR is a PCR method that adds a process of converting RNA into DNA before PCR progression, amplified by polymer chain reaction (PCR) technique, and confirmed the virus band by performing electrophoresis in an agarose gel. Disinfection of eight different viruses was examined, such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), avian influenza virus (H9N2), human influenza virus (H1N1), Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV5); zika virus (ZIKV); dengue virus (DENV3), and adenovirus. This experiment used the RNA genome virus and confirmed the M gene by RT-PCR after RNA virus purification. The photocatalytic efficiencies of the cellulose before and after modification were compared for the virus disinfection. The obtained result against virus degradation indicates that pristine cellulose (PC) shows no effect, cellulose with TiO2 (CT) is better than pristine cellulose. Still, the surface modification of cellulose with TiO2 and porphyrin (CTP1, CTP2, and CTP3) showed a better effect against examined viruses.