(162d) Modification of Metal Surfaces with Dual-Functional, Superhydrophobic Coating for Bacterial Antiadhesion and Antimicrobial

Millions of illness and deaths caused by bacterial pathogens occur every year all over the world. Bacterial adhesion, proliferation, growth and transmission are the key steps of the bacterial fouling. Hence, various smart surface modification methods have been reported to prevent the adhesion of bacteria or inactivate the bacteria separately. Furthermore, developing novel surfaces and coatings combining antimicrobial and antiadhesion properties is a more effective way to prevent the bacterial pathogens from attachment, proliferation, growth and contamination. In this work, we report a dual-functional coating on aluminum surfaces based on the immobilization of the nature antimicrobial lysozyme enzyme into the interstitial of nanostructured silica nanoparticles coating with the following chemical modification of organofluorosilane on the available interfacial areas. This dual-functional coating had a root-mean-square roughness range between 402 nm to 676 nm and a superhydrophobic property with ~159° static contact angle. With the combination of the lysozyme enzyme and superhydrophobicity, the coated surfaces produced a 99.999% and 99.99% reduction of bacterial colonization against the Gram-negative Salmonella Typhimurium LT2 and Gram-positive Listeria innocua, respectively. This high efficiency against bacterial pathogen is ascribed to the combination of interstitial air diminishing the contact area between surfaces and bacteria suspension, and the lysozyme in the local space inactivate the contacted bacterial. We anticipate these bacterial anti-adhesive and antimicrobial coatings on metal surfaces provide a high-efficiency strategy to prevent bacterial attachment in healthcare environment and surfaces to reduce or eliminate the risk of bacterial pathogens contamination and cross-contamination.