In the current medical facility, antibiotics has been used as standard weapon to treat various infectious diseases, however its overuse can accelerate the drug resistivity in the microbes. Recently, TMDs, typically 2D MoS2 nanosheets have become popular due to easy charge tuning through surface modification to enhance the antibacterial activity. The non- specific bactericidal action and evolvement of drug resistant can be reduced by strain selective bactericidal strategies. Herein, we functionalized chemically exfoliated MoS2 nanosheets with different molar ratios of cationic and anionic ligands. The motivation behind the implementation of mixed charge is to control the balance between polyvalent electrostatic and non-covalent interactions to disrupt the bacterial cell wall. We investigated the antibacterial activity of all mixed charge MoS2 against MRSA and P. aeruginosa which belongs to Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens respectively. Interestingly, certain intermediate ratios of positive and negative ligand functionalization found to be potent and Gram selective. The mechanistic insight into all results was also established by using different optical probes.

Achieving gram selectivity of mixed charge MoS2 nanosheets by tuning the balance of surface charge

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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