Fabrication of Silver Nanoparticle-Embedded Biocidal Fibrous Nanostructures in aqueous system

摘要

With the growing concerns on public hygiene and contamination of environment, antibacterial agents have been developed.~(1-3) Among them, silver has shown outstanding antimicrobial activity against bacteria, causing the collapse of bacterial membranes.~(4-5) Furthermore, there have been numerous reports on silver nanomaterials and nanocomposites and their enhanced antibacterial activity due to increased surface area.~(6-9) However, antibacterial activity is limited in silver-containing materials that kill bacteria by the release of silver ions or silver nanoparticles, which leads to depletion of silver nanoparticles in the nanostructure. To enhance the durability of biocidal activity, researchers have suggested incorporation of silver onto biocidal substrates, such as rhodanine or quaternary ammonium compounds.~(8-9) In the categories of biocidal polymers, 2-(tert-butylaminoethyl) methacrylate (TBAM) shows its own biocidal activity because secondary amine on the pendant alkyl group causes separation of lipid layers of bacteria, leading to death of cell. In this report, the one-step synthesis of silver nanoparticles-embedded poly[2-(tert-butylaminoethyl) methacrylate] (Ag/PTBAM) nanofibers by radicalmediated dispersion polymerization is performed. The nanoscale PTBAM fibrous morphology possesses very high surface area, which in turn leads to higher cell attachment and higher silver release. In addition, the synthesized silver nanoparticles embedded-PTBAM nanofibers had enhanced antibacterial effect compared to silver sulfadiazine (SSD) and silver nanoparticles-embedded PMMA nanofibers against Gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Grampositive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).