ANTIBACTERIAL EFFECT OF THINTiO2:Ag:CuFILM
Y. A. KUTSOVA, M. M. ANDREEVA,D.S. STOYANOVA, O. I. ANGELOV, I. IVANOVA*
Faculty of Biology,Dragan Tsankov 8, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria.
*Corresponding author:e-mail:iaivanova@biofac.uni-sofia.bg
Keywords: nanomaterials, nanocomposite, thin films
Abstract: Infections mediated bymedical devices are a significant social and economic problem. Rapidly developing resistance to traditionally used antibiotics makes the search for new antimicrobial materials a serious contemporary challenge. Recently, the use of nanoparticles and nanomaterials for biomedical research, such as Cu, TiO2, Ag, etc., has gained more attention due to their unique properties. Nanomaterials are chemicals or materials with at least one dimension of 1 to 100 nm. The thin TiO2:Ag:Cu films are made by magnetron sputtering under different deposition conditions and with different technological characteristics. They were tested on several bacteria with different cell wall structure: Pseudomonas putida, Salmonella enterica, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli,allarranged in increasing order of resistivity to the film. Inhibition of bacterial growth and propagation is determined by the Koch method and the corresponding optical density measurements. The investigation of the toxicity of nanomaterials is of global importance because of their safety concerns, based on the ability to mechanically destroy live cells. The research and results have shown that some of the nanostructured films have a significant bactericidal effect and might be useful in the future.