Vacancy engineering of BiOCl microspheres for efficient removal of multidrug-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes in wastewater

Abstract Multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs) are becoming global risks severely threatening ecosystem and human health. Enhancing the bacterial binding activity is critical for improving MDR bacterium-/ARG-removal efficiency of photocatalysts. In this study, we performed vacancy engineering of BiOCl photocatalysts to enhance their bacterium-binding activity for removal of both MDR bacteria and ARGs. The convenient template-guided vacancy engineering generated two vacancy types of BiOCl microspheres, i.e., VBiO and VBiOBiBiBi. The VBiO microspheres exhibited higher adsorption capacity to bacterial cell wall components than VBiOBiBiBi, leading to stronger binding to bacterial cells, and further to higher capacity to remove MDR bacteria in the wastewater under visible light irradiation. Moreover, the VBiO microspheres also displayed higher DNA-binding capacity, resulting in efficient removal of ARGs from the wastewater. This study provides a convenient vacancy-engineering strategy to enhance bacterium-/DNA-binding capacity of photocatalysts for efficient disinfection of wastewater and eradication of ARGs.