Abstract
Cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) is considered as an inexhaustible precursor to produce antibacterial materials, such as antibacterial hydrogel, antibacterial paper, and antibacterial film. However, the poor antimicrobial property of neat CNF required it should be coupled with an antibacterial ingredient. Herein, biocompatible Au nanoclusters (AuNCs) were synthesized and added into the CNF dispersion to prepare a novel antibacterial film (AuNCs@CNF film). The effects of addition of AuNCs with different amount on the morphology and physicochemical properties of AuNCs@CNF films were characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared), light transmittance spectra, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The results showed that AuNCs did not affect the nano-structural features of the CNF film and its basic structures, but could greatly increase the hydrophilicity, the flexibility and the thermal stability of CNF film, which might improve its application in antimicrobial wound-healing dressing. The prepared AuNCs@CNF films demonstrated high antibacterial properties toward Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) both in vitro and in vivo, which can prohibit their growths and promote the healing of bacteria-infected wound, respectively. Thus, the prepared AuNCs@CNF film with great antibacterial properties could be applicable in biomedical field.
Highlights
Cellulose is the most abundant polysaccharide on earth and has been considered as an inexhaustible source to produce the environmental-friendly and biocompatible materials (Bian et al, 2019; Wu et al, 2019a; Lin et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2020)
The corresponding statistical data (Figure 7C) demonstrated that Au nanoclusters (AuNCs)@cellulose nanofibrils (CNF)-0.2 film displayed relatively larger zones than that of AuNCs@CNF-0.05 and AuNCs@CNF-0.1. To further investigate their antibacterial mechanism, AuNCs release from AuNCs@CNF film were measured by incubating with PBS buffer at 37◦C for 24 and 48 h, the results indicated that the AuNCs@CNF had a doseand time-dependent increase of AuNCs release (Supplementary Figure S5), which play an important role in antibacterial efficiency of AuNCs@CNF films through membrane damage of bacteria (Figure 2D)
The synthesized biocompatible Au nanoclusters showed great antibacterial properties for the prohibition of E. coli and S. mutans when it was in CNF dispersion solution
Summary
Cellulose is the most abundant polysaccharide on earth and has been considered as an inexhaustible source to produce the environmental-friendly and biocompatible materials (Bian et al, 2019; Wu et al, 2019a; Lin et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2020). Procuring cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) from cellulose has gained attention to produce nanofiber-reinforced composites, including microelectronic and electro-optical films, gas-barrier films, cosmetics, and food packing films (Rojo et al, 2015; Li et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2019). CNF is considered as the precursor to produce antimicrobial materials, such as antibacterial hydrogel, antibacterial paper, and antibacterial film, which can be used as the food packing films, drug carriers, infected woundhealing formulation and multifunctional antibacterial films (Li et al, 2018; Han et al, 2019). Various technologies have been applied to improve the antibacterial properties of CNF-based materials, such as surface modification, antibiotic addition, combination with nanomaterials, and combination with antibacterial polymers (Jia et al, 2012; Li et al, 2018; Bagde and Nadanathangam, 2019)
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