Au–Cu Bimetallic Nanostructures for Photothermal Antibacterial and Wound Healing Promotion

The spread of drug-resistant bacterial infections can lead to serious infectious diseases and pose a significant threat to public health security. Metallic-nano-antibacterial materials are gradually becoming a hot spot for antimicrobial biomaterials research with the advantages of long service life and fast effective bactericidal speed. Considering the construction of a safe and efficient photothermal therapy (PTT) antibacterial platform as a promising strategy for the treatment of bacterial infections, a near-infrared (NIR) bimetallic antibacterial nanoparticle, adenosine 5′-triphosphate (ATP)@Au-Cu nanoparticle (NP), with excellent photothermal conversion efficiency (59.3%) was prepared in this paper; ATP@Au-CuNPs with their multiarm shaped structure and NIR photothermal effect could significantly inhibit the growth of bacteria at the low concentrations. In addition, the cytotoxicity and hemolysis rate of the ATP-coated nanoparticles were reduced considerably, and they also exhibited antibacterial and wound healing-promoting effects in mice wound infection models. On this basis, this paper focuses on the preparation and properties of ATP@Au-CuNPs and explores their biological application in antibacterial therapy.