Precisely Engineered Photoreactive Titanium Nanoarray Coating to Mitigate Biofouling in Ultrafiltration

To combat biofouling on membranes, diverse nanostructures of titanium dioxide (TiO2) have emerged as effective antimicrobial coatings due to TiO2’s abilities to transport charge and photoinduce oxidation. However, TiO2 composite polymeric membranes synthesized using traditional methods of growing crystals have proven chemically unstable, with loss of coating and diminishing antimicrobial performance. Thus, new fabrication methods to enhance durability and efficacy should be considered. In this work, we propose a stepwise approach to construct a stable, uniform TiO2 nanoarray of regularly spaced, aligned crystals on the surface of a polytetrafluoroethylene ultrafiltration membrane using precisely controlled atomic layer deposition (ALD) followed by solvothermal deposition. We demonstrate that ALD can uniformly seed TiO2 nanoparticles on the membrane surface with atomic-scale precision. Subsequently, solvothermal deposition assembles and aligns a uniform TiO2 nanoarray forest. In the presence of sunlight, this TiO2 nanoarray effectively inactivates any deposited bacteria, increasing flux recovery after membrane cleaning. By systematically investigating this antimicrobial activity, we found that TiO2 both physically damages cell membranes as well as produces reactive oxygen species in the presence of sunlight that inactivate bacteria. Our study provides an effective bottom-up synthesis scheme to optimize and tailor antifouling TiO2 coatings for ultrafiltration and other surfaces for a wide range of applications.