Rapid photothermal antibacterial and antifungal textiles through dynamic disulfide bond-assisted in-situ deposition of SeNPs

Inorganic nanoparticles have significant surface and are often used as efficient antimicrobial agent to solve the problem of bacterial propagation on textile surfaces. However, the commonly used antibacterial nanomaterials generally exhibit weak binding force to textiles, and can be toxic to both the human body and the environment. Herein, in this work, we demonstrated a facile yet effective approach to construct rapid photothermal antibacterial and antifungal textiles, through the dynamic disulfide bond-assisted in-situ deposition of selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) onto cotton fabric. Briefly, selenium nanospheres with an average particle size of 40 nm were successfully prepared, using α-lipoic acid-modified polylysine (mPLL) as soft template and ascorbic acid as reducing agent. Subsequently, the nanospheres were induced to cross-link with cotton fibers by reconstructing the disulfide bonds and bridging with ethylene glycol diglycyl ether (EGDE). The resulting composite fabric, cotton-g-mPLL@SeNPs, exhibits excellent photothermal conversion ability and durable antibacterial and antifungal properties. Meanwhile, a bright orange-red appearance and excellent anti-ultraviolet ability were achieved after the introduction of inorganic nanoparticles onto fabric surface, without obvious adverse effects on the wearability performances such as hand feeling and air permeability. Furthermore, the obtained textiles crucially remain highly biocompatible and non-cytotoxic, significantly superior to traditional antibacterial nanoparticles such as nanosilver. The present work provides a novel alternative for preparation of the nanoparticle-based textiles with rapid and durable antibacterial and antifungal properties.