Amino modified cellulose fibers loaded zinc oxide nanoparticles via paper-making wet-forming for antibacterial materials.

Bacterial infection has become one of the major threats to human health all over the world, and the development and application of antibacterial materials has drawn great attention. Based on the Schiff-base structure, ZnONPs@ACFs are obtained by loading zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) on amino cellulose fibers (ACFs) in-situ through the coordination of amino groups with metal ions. The results of FT-IR, XRD and UV-vis demonstrate that ZnONPs are successfully loaded and uniformly dispersed on ACF surface, and the ACFs maintain intact morphology observed by SEM. Furthermore, the zero-span tensile strength of ZnONPs@ACFs is 66.48 N/cm (ROL: 24.98 N/cm/s) under the optimum conditions, which indicates that ZnONPs@ACFs have a certain strength and can be used to make antibacterial sheet materials via paper-making wet-forming process. Accordingly, the ZnONPs@ACF composites show inhibition zones of 4.95 mm and 1.10 mm against E. coli and S. aureus, respectively. The new cellulose-based antibacterial materials demonstrate potential applications in the field of food packaging and biological medicine etc.