Facile synthesis of copper sulfide nanoflower decorated amine-grafted polyacrylonitrile fibers for rapid and long-lasting antimicrobial performance mediated by photothermal and photocatalytic effects

Textiles, by virtue of their porous structure, furnish a propitious environment for the proliferation of microorganisms, potentially jeopardizing human daily life. Consequently, textile materials endowed with rapid and long - lasting antibacterial capabilities are extensively required in diverse scenarios. Copper sulfide (CuS) possesses favorable photothermal and catalytic properties and can be employed in the preparation of antibacterial textiles. Herein, we prepared a series of novel CuS nanoflower decorated amine-grafted polyacrylonitrile (APAN) textiles through two steps aqueous method where Cu ion was first been chelate on fiber surface and introduce sodium sulfide to form CuS through an in-situ replacement. The morphology, structure, and corresponding antimicrobial ability for the obtained CuSNP-APAN were examined. The optimal APAN/CuS fiber (i.e. APAN/CuS 100 ) achieved 99.99 % antibacterial efficiency against Escherichia coli ( E. coli ) and Staphylococcus aureus ( S. aureus ) within 30 min and 45 min respectively under simulated sunlight irradiation. Even for the drug-resistant Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), modified fiber showed an extremely high antibacterial rate (84.73 %) after 2 h contact, much higher than the original APAN fibers and the as-prepared APAN/CuSO 4 and APAN/CuS 50 . Even after 100-cycles washes, the antibacterial rate of APAN/CuS 100 still kept high and the leaching of Cu 2 + was 0.24 mg L −1 . This study provides a reliable approach for photothermal catalytic bacterial deactivation, and expand the application for amine-grafted polyacrylonitrile fibers.