Silver-modified graphene oxide nanosheets for antibacterial performance of bone scaffold

Zhiheng Yu,Yang Xu,Xiu Tian

doi:10.1063/5.0079975

Abstract

Endowing scaffold with antibacterial activity is an effective countermeasure to prevent bacterial infection in bone repair. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) possess broad-spectrum antibacterial efficiency, whereas the agglomeration and burst releasing of Ag NPs hindered their clinic application in bone repair. In this work, Ag NPs were in situ grown on graphene oxide (GO) to construct Ag@GO nanohybrids and then were introduced into polymer scaffold. GO could efficiently load Ag NPs thereby improving their agglomeration in a scaffold, owing to their abundant active groups and large surface areas. Furthermore, GO could realize the sustained release of Ag ions from the scaffold. The results demonstrated the antibacterial scaffold exhibited robust antibacterial performance with an antibacterial rate of 95% against Staphylococcus aureus. On one hand, GO with honeycomb nanostructure and sharp edge could capture and pierce bacteria membrane, which results in physical damage of bacteria. On the other hand, the released Ag NPs from Ag@GO nanohybrids could promote the generation of reactive oxygen species, which causes the inactivation of bacteria. Encouragingly, the antibacterial scaffold also exhibited good cytocompatibility. This work developed an efficient antibacterial material for the scaffold in bone repair.

Highlights

The Ag@graphene oxide (GO) nanohybrids were introduced into the poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) scaffold by 3D printing technology, aiming to improve the antibacterial performance of the PLLA scaffold
The results demonstrated that the PLLA scaffold has robust antibacterial performance with a 95% antibacterial rate against S. aureus after introducing the Ag@GO nanohybrids
GO with a sharp edge caused the physical damage of bacteria membranes

Summary

Introduction

Bacterial triggered infection often leads to the failure of bone repair.. Antibiotic therapy was widely used to prevent the bacterial triggered infection, but the abuse of antimicrobial agents leads to bacterial resistance.. It was necessary to find a substitute with excellent antibacterial activity and biosafety for bone repair application.. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) were considered as the efficient antibacterial agent due to their broad-spectrum antibacterial activity and no bacterial resistance.. It was demonstrated that the formation of hybrid polymer-metal NPs could improve the antibacterial activity and biocompatibility of NPs.. Ag NPs were prone to aggregate in the matrix due to their high specific surface energy, resulting in the decrease of antibacterial activity.. The burst releasing of Ag NPs from the matrix was an intractable biosafety problem because they were incompatible with the polymer matrix.

Methods

Results

Conclusion