Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition produced highly hydrophilic TiO2 films with significant antibacterial effects against Escherichia coli, suggesting promising applications in biocide layers.
In this work, TiO2 thin films were deposited using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique from a mixture of titanium tetraisopoxide (TTIP) and oxygen. The effectiveness of the synthesized layers as a self-protective agent against Escherichia coli bacteria has been evaluated directly after plasma deposition, both with and without thermal treatments. Water contact angle (WCA) measurement, Fourier transforms infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and atomic force microscope (AFM) were employed to characterize the chemical structure and surface morphology of the elaborated biocide layers before and after thermal annealing. AFM images revealed the growth of well-defined nanostructure, maximizing the number of reactive surface atoms, which are essential for the film’s photocatalytic activity. WCA measurement showed that the film wettability changes from hydrophilic to super-hydrophilic after UV light exposure. A significant antibacterial activity of the TiO2 thin films deposited via PECVD has been observed attributed to the combined effects of increased hydrophilicity and photocatalytic activity under UV light. Furthermore, the correlation between the biocide character and the films physicochemical properties have been investigated in this study.
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Teniou et al. (2025) studied this question.
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