Thymol-functionalized hollow mesoporous silica spheres nanoparticles: preparation, characterization and bactericidal activity

Antimicrobial natural products show good antimicrobial activities; however, some of them have unpleasant odor or high volatility that limits their application in food industry. One of solutions is to introduce them in inorganic media. In this study, hollow mesoporous silica sphere (HS) was used to encapsulate natural organic antimicrobial agent thymol, and antimicrobial activity of the resulted antimicrobial agent (HST) was tested. Materials characterization revealed that the thymol was successfully introduced into the cavities of HS, and the inorganic host exhibited a high loading capacity of 1320 mg g−1. In addition, the antibacterial activities were tested by double-fold dilution method, the minimum bactericidal concentrations of HST against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) were decreased compared with that of thymol. Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy observation confirmed that HST indeed showed a notable inhibitory effect against E. coli and S. aureus by disrupting cell membrane structure.