Mahsa Kiani, Mojtaba Bagherzadeh, Reyhaneh Kaveh, Navid Rabiee, Yousef Fatahi, Rassoul Dinarvand, Ho Won Jang, Mohammadreza Shokouhimehr, Rajender S Varma
Decorating photocatalysts with noble metal nanoparticles (e.g., Pt) often increases the catalysts' photocatalytic activity and biomedical properties. Here, a simple and inexpensive method has been developed to prepare a Pt-AgPO/CdS/chitosan composite, which was characterized and used for the visible light-induced photocatalytic and antibacterial studies. This synthesized composite showed superior photocatalytic activity for methylene blue degradation as a hazardous pollutant (the maximum dye degradation was observed in 90 min of treatment) and killing of Gram positive bacterial ( and ) as well as Gram negative bacteria (, , , and ) under visible light irradiation. The antibacterial activity of CdS, CdS/AgPO, and Pt-AgPO/CdS/chitosan against , , , , , and showed the zone of inhibition (mm) under visible light and under dark conditions at a concentration of 20 µg mL. Furthermore, the cell viability of the CdS/chitosan, AgPO, AgPO/CdS/chitosan, and Pt-AgPO/CdS/chitosan were investigated on the human embryonic kidney 293 cells (HEK-293), Henrietta Lacks (HeLa), human liver cancer cell line (HepG2), and pheochromocytoma (PC12) cell lines. In addition, the results indicated that the photodegradation rate for Pt-AgPO/CdS/chitosan is 3.53 times higher than that of CdS and 1.73 times higher than that of the CdS/AgPO composite. Moreover, Pt-AgPO/CdS/chitosan with an optimal amount of CdS killed large areas of different bacteria and different cells separately in a shorter time period under visible-light irradiation, which shows significantly higher efficiency than pure CdS and other CdS/AgPO composites. The superb performances of this composite are attributed to its privileged properties, such as retarded recombination of photoinduced electron/hole pairs and a large specific surface area, making Pt-AgPO/CdS/chitosan a valuable composite that can be deployed for a range of important applications, such as visible light-induced photocatalysis and antibacterial activity.