Investigation on visible light-driven antimicrobial and mechanistic activity of GO/TiO2(V–N) nanocomposite against wound pathogens

Abstract

Infectious microbes impede wound healing by invading the wound region. In the past few years, scientists have introduced a variety of photoactive nanomaterials and nanocomposites with high antimicrobial effects. This work focused on the fabrication of a graphene oxide-based nanocomposite (GO/TiO₂(V–N)) as an efficient visible light-driven antimicrobial material. The hydrothermal technique was adopted to synthesize GO/TiO₂(V–N) nanocomposites with different weight percentages of TiO₂(V–N) (10 to 50 wt%). To analyze the physicochemical and structural features of the GO/TiO₂(V–N) nanocomposites, XRD, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used. Furthermore, in the presence of light, GO/TiO₂(V–N) was employed as a photocatalytic active material against wound pathogens such as E. coli, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus and E. faecalis. In vitro antibacterial studies such as growth curve, colony count, biofilm, protein leakage, membrane integrity, ROS generation, LDH release, DNA fragmentation, and TEM analysis of nanocomposite interaction with bacteria were performed in the presence and absence of light. According to the results, the GO/TiO₂(V–N) nanocomposites showed enhanced antibacterial activity against wound pathogens.