Construction of BODIPY functional ZIF-8 with improved visible light-induced antibacterial activity

Developing novel bactericide and therapeutic strategy to inhibit bacterial –resistance has become the attractive research area. Light-activated nano-antibacterial agents have become the current research hotspot due to their multimodal antibacterial effect. However, the poor response to visible light and wide energy gap greatly reduce nano-material photo-induced antibacterial activity. Herein, a novel visible light-induced nano-antibacterial composite (BODIPY-ZIF-8) are constructed by introducing boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) into the framework of ZIF-8. BODIPY-ZIF-8 are found to be the microporous hollow spheres with specific surface area of 612.30 m2/g and exhibit extraordinary photo-induced antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus in comparison to the reported ZIF-8 based antibacterial agents. The successful introduction of BODIPY decreases the band gap energy and increases the light absorption, simultaneously BODIPY acts as a structure-directing agent of controlling the morphology of BODIPY-ZIF-8. The study of antibacterial mechanism indicates that BODIPY-ZIF-8 show synergistic antibacterial effect due to the reactive oxygen species (ROS) production under LED irradiation. The work not only provides a facile method for the preparation of antibacterial composite but develops a valuable strategy to the visible light-induced antibacterial agent.