Visible-light driven rapid bacterial inactivation on red phosphorus/titanium oxide nanofiber heterostructures

Highlights: • Red phosphorus/titanium oxide (TiO₂@RP) was developed by a vacuum ampoule method. • TiO₂@RP exhibits rapid photocatalytic bacterial inactivation performance. • Efficient light harvesting and charge migration lead to excellent disinfection. • The h⁺, • O₂^- and H₂O₂ are dominant reactive species in the antibacterial process. Photocatalytic water disinfection has emerged as a promising approach for water purification. However, exploring efficient and rapid visible light driven materials for photocatalytic bacterial inactivation is still a challenging problem. Herein, red phosphorus/titanium oxide (TiO₂@RP) nanofibers were developed for effective water disinfection by a vacuum ampoule strategy. The complete E. coli and S. aureus (7-log CFU mL⁻¹) could be rapidly killed within 25 min and 30 min over the optimized TiO₂@RP heterostructure under the white LED irradiation. The efficient photocatalytic antibacterial activity should be mainly ascribed to the synergetic enhancement in light absorption by RP decoration and charge migration and separation by the interface between TiO₂ and RP. And then more unpaired photo-carriers would be transferred to the surface to facilitate the generation of photo-holes, • O₂^- radicals, and H₂O₂ species, which could destroy the bacterial cells efficiently.