ENHANCED ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF BIOCIDES LOADED TiO2-BASED PHOTOCATALYST

Abstract

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in December 2019, various photocatalysts for killing the microbial have been utilized in the design of different personal protective equipment. The efficiency of the photocatalyst is long-lasting. However, the initial killing efficiency is relatively lower compared to most of the biocides. In this study, an attempt was made to increase the initial bacterial killing efficiency (BKE) of TiO2-based photocatalyst by loading mixture of 2-mthyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (MIT) & 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (CIT) which are commonly used biocides in the textile industry. For this purpose, different loading (1 wt%, 3 wt% and 5 wt%) of MIT and CIT mixture was added into a textile screen printing paste (Adphocat®) which consisted of metal doped TiO2 photocatalyst as the antibacterial agent. The opacity of the samples was determined with Data color 800 spectrometer and BKE was examined using gram positive bacteria, Staphylococcus Aureus. Results indicated that the addition of mixture of MIT and CIT biocide has increased significantly the initial BKE of the textile screen printing paste without changing the opacity of the textile screen print (~13.5%). The initial BKE increased with the increasing of loading content of the biocides in the textile screen printing paste.