Antibacterial Metallo-Hydrogels as Potential Water Purifiers and Nano Silver Carriers

Chemical contamination in water caused by toxic dyes is becoming a severe environmental problem, even at low concentration, can generate deleterious effects on human health. Hydrogels have been proved to be the efficient materials in dye removal. To solve the problem of dye pollution, novel antibacterial metallo-hydrogels, composed of 18 β -glycyrrhetinic acid ( GA ) derivative ( GA-O-09 ) with iron and aluminum ions were prepared, respectively. The hydrogels had high efficiency of dyes adsorption with outstanding theoretical adsorption capacity at equilibriums (q e ) ranging from 69.7 to 84.5 mg/g and showed excellent antibacterial activities suppressing Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) among 0.625 to 1.25 μg/mL, which indicated that such hydrogels could be widely used in wastewater treatment. In addition, further studies had demonstrated that such antibacterial hydrogels could be used as drug carriers that loading nano silver with broad-spectrum antibacterial activities, which successfully enhanced the antibacterial activities and enlarged the antibacterial spectra of these metallo-hydrogels. This study had provided a new method for the treatment of dyes wastewater. The new sewage treatment materials were prepared with better performances those were more rapid and easy preparation, multi-function, health, and environmental protection by comparing with traditional ones. Therefore, it would be contributed to the establishment of a better future since the potential and scientific prospects in our study.