Visible light antibacterial potential of cement mortar incorporating Cu-ZnO/g-C(3)N(4) nanocomposites

In this work, a hybrid Cu-ZnO/g-C(3)N(4) nanocomposite was synthesized and introduced to fabricate photocatalytic cement mortars by internal mixing. The bactericidal properties of the photocatalytic mortars were explored by using E. coli, S. aureus and P. aeruginosa as a bacteria test strain. The results showed that the Cu-ZnO/g-C(3)N(4) nanocomposite had an enhanced harvesting of visible light energy and exhibited excellent stability during the photocatalytic process, which favored a long-term usage performance. The sterilizing efficiency of the photocatalytic cement mortars improved with an increasing content of Cu-ZnO/g-C(3)N(4) nanocomposites. A possible bactericidal mechanism was proposed based on the active species trapping experiments, verifying that the photogenerated holes (h(+)) and ˙O(2)(−) radicals were the main active species.