Facing the challenges of bacterial infection and antibiotic resistance, developing robust antibacterial nano reagents with controllable structures is still an unmet need and in high demand. Germanium-based compounds become potential candidates of safe antibacterial agent, owing to their high biocompatibility to mammals and specific toxic effects against bacteria, we have synthesized size-tunable uniform Benzalkonium chloride (BKC)-germanium (Ge)-based nanoparticles (NPs) in water phase. Uniform spherical nanoparticles with tunable size and surface with diameters from 80 nm to 500 nm were produced. Compared to bare GeOx Ge, BKC-NPs displayed stronger antibacterial ability against both gram-positive (G+, S. aureus) and gram-negative (G-, E. coli) bacteria. Meanwhile, the BKC-GeOx nanosphere with smaller size leads to better antibacterial performance. After treatment with bacteria, the BKC- GeOx sample with smaller size loses the sphere shape and the initial amorphous structure transfers to a crystalline structure. The mechanism may be the BKC layer promotes the adhesion of the particles to bacterial cell membranes and act as a bridge to enhance the interaction between the BKC-GeOx NPs and cell membrane. Due to biology and environmental toxicity of heavy metal antibacterial NPs, such as Ag NPs, BKC-GeOx NPs may use as a low-cost and safe antibacterial NPs with high efficiency in the future.

One-pot benzalkonium-directed synthesis of GeOx nanoparticles with enhanced broad-spectrum antibacterial effects

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.