Alkane Chain-Bearing Pyridylboronic Acid-Grafted Graphitic Carbon Nitride-Loaded Polyacrylonitrile Membrane for Efficient Photocatalytic Bacterial Killing

A positively charged ammonium side chain, a pyridylboronic acid side chain, and mixed two moieties were grafted on intrinsic g - C 3 N 4 to yield functionalized materials, g - C 3 N 4 - C 4, g - C 3 N 4 - B, and g - C 3 N 4 - C 4 - B . All the decorated g - C 3 N 4 materials displayed enhanced photocatalytic ROS ( 1 O 2 and • O 2 – ) generation capabilities compared to intrinsic g - C 3 N 4 . Among them, g - C 3 N 4 - B displayed the most potent ROS generation capability. In addition, ξ potential results revealed the strongest affinity of g - C 3 N 4 - C 4 - B toward representative Gram-negative and positive bacteria (MDR Acinetobacter baumannii and Staphylococcus aureus ). The photocatalytic antibacterial results demonstrated that g - C 3 N 4 - B could achieve faster and efficient bacterial killing compared with g - C 3 N 4 - C 4 and g - C 3 N 4 - C 4 - B (>99% killing rates toward MDR A. baumannii and S. aureus and >95% toward Escherichia coli ). Thus, it could be concluded that ROS generation capability plays a more important role in photocatalytic antibacterial activity over bacterial binding capability in the current case. g - C 3 N 4 - B was further fabricated into a PAN fiber membrane for photocatalytic antibacterial application. The 0.8 wt % g - C 3 N 4 - B -loaded PAN membrane showed potent antibacterial activities toward MDR A. baumannii, S. aureus, and E. coli, with efficiencies of 99.79%, 99.37%, and 99.96%, respectively. Thus, g - C 3 N 4 - B could serve as a potent broad-spectrum photocatalytic antibacterial material. And we proposed a novel strategy for improving photocatalytic antibacterial activity for g - C 3 N 4 .