Reduction of bacterial adhesion on Ag-TiO2 coatings

Ag-TiO2 nano-composite coatings showed the synergistic effect on the anti-bacterial activity. However, little was known on the mechanism of the enhanced anti-bacterial effect. In this paper, a range of AgTiO2 nano-composited coating with different TiO2 contents were prepared on titanium substrate using an electroless deposition technique and the antibacterial performance of the coatings were evaluated with E. coli and S. aureus. This work demonstrated for the first time that the incorporation of TiO2 nano-particles into Ag matrix not only significantly promoted the Ag ion release, but also significantly increased the electron donor surface energy, which lead to the enhanced antibacterial effect of the AgTiO2 coatings. (c) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).