Bio-assisted synthesis of bimetallic nanoparticles featuring antibacterial and photothermal properties for the removal of biofilms

Biofilms are responsible for about considerable amounts of cases of bacterial infections in humans. They are considered a major threat to transplant and chronic wounds patients due to their highly resistant nature against antibacterial materials and due to the limited types of techniques that can be applied to remove them. Here we demonstrate a successful in-situ bio-assisted synthesis of dual functionality nanoparticles composed of Silver and Gold. This is done using a jellyfish-based scaffold, an antibacterial material as the templating host in the synthesis. We further explore the scaffold’s antibacterial and photothermal properties against various gram-negative and positive model bacteria with and without photo-induced heating at the Near-IR regime. We show that when the scaffold is loaded with these bimetallic nanoparticles, it exhibits dual functionality: Its photothermal capabilities help to disrupt and remove bacterial colonies and mature biofilms, and its antibacterial properties prevent the regrowth of new biofilms. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-021-01183-x.