Antimicrobial Activity of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Suspended in Different Surfactants

Lifeng Dong,Christopher Field,Alex Henderson

doi:10.1155/2012/928924

Abstract

We investigated the antibacterial activity of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) dispersed in surfactant solutions of sodium cholate, sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate, and sodium dodecyl sulfate. Among the three surfactants, sodium cholate demonstrated the weakest antibacterial activity againstSalmonella enterica,Escherichia coli, andEnterococcus faeciumand thereby was used to disperse bundled SWCNTs in order to study nanotube antibiotic activity. SWCNTs exhibited antibacterial characteristics for bothS. entericaandE. coli. With the increase of nanotube concentrations from 0.3 mg/mL to 1.5 mg/mL, the growth curves had plateaus at lower absorbance values whereas the absorbance value was not obviously affected by the incubation ranging from 5 min to 2 h. Our findings indicate that carbon nanotubes could become an effective alternative to antibiotics in dealing with drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant bacterial strains because of the physical mode of bactericidal action that SWCNTs display.

Highlights

Due to their unique chemical and physical properties, singlewalled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have been extensively investigated as the building blocks for nanoscale electronic devices [1,2,3] and the catalyst supports for direct ethanol/methanol fuel cells [4,5,6]
Sodium cholate proved to be a desired surfactant with which we examine SWCNT antibacterial activity because it displayed the weakest inhibitory activity among broadly used surfactants
Sodium cholate did not provide complete bactericidal effects on S. enterica until the bacterium was treated with 12% sodium cholate (SC) in solution

Summary

Introduction

Due to their unique chemical and physical properties, singlewalled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have been extensively investigated as the building blocks for nanoscale electronic devices [1,2,3] and the catalyst supports for direct ethanol/methanol fuel cells [4,5,6]. For these applications, the bundled nanotubes usually need to be dispersed into individual nanotubes through surfactant stabilization of the hydrophobic nanotube surfaces. The effects of SWCNTs’ concentration and treatment time on their antimicrobial activity were tested

Materials and Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusions