Synergistic Antibacterial and Anticorrosive Effect of Polysulfone Nanofibers Embedded with Biogenic Silver Nanoparticles for Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion of Nickel

Abstract

Due to water‐repellency property and nanoparticle functionalization, nanofibers hold great potential of anti‐bacterial and anti‐corrosive properties. This study examines electrospinning technology to coatings polysulfone and embedded biogenic silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) polysulfone nanofibers (PSU−Nf) onto nickel for anti‐bacterial and anti‐corrosive protection. The anti‐corrosion performances of the hydrophobic nanofibers coated nickel surfaces were analyzed by weight loss, Tafel polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The antibacterial activity of nanofibers was analyzed using Pseudomonas aeruginosa which is a model biofilm bacterium. Results showed that the presence of AgNPs on the nanofibers reduces the cell counts. In addition, obtained electrochemical results confirmed the successful corrosion protection of PSU‐Nfs which corrosion current values of PSU−Nf coated Ni samples for 3 d is nearly 10 times smaller (12.1 μA cm−2) than that of bare Nickel (170 μA cm−2) samples. The EIS data agree with the polarization data that charge transfer resistance (Rct) showed a significant increase after Nf coatings. As a result, metal coated with PSU nanofibers and AgNPs embedded PSU‐Nfs has corrosion protection in both artificial seawater with and without biofilm bacteria. Further, due to environmentally friendly approach, electrospinning has the potential of using surface protection instead of toxic pretreatments and coatings.

Design and Manufacturing of Antibacterial Electrospun Polysulfone Membranes Functionalized by Ag Nanocoating via Magnetron Sputtering

“…Such a result is even more interesting when considering the very low content of Ag in our samples, i.e., an Ag/PSU ratio of about 0.1-0.2%wt. in our work vs. typical ratios in the range 0.3-5% employed in other previous works [22,23,25]. After the exponential decay fit of data in Figure 14 (right panel), DOE7-Ag resulted in a slightly faster antibacterial effect, with a bacterial decrease rate that was about 1.5 times higher than that of DOE3-Ag.…”

“…Recently, PSU membranes have been combined with Ag nanoparticles to add antibacterial behavior and control the membrane wettability properties for usages in water filtration and other possible applications [22][23][24][25][26]. However, only in a few of them [25,26] the PSU membranes are fabricated by the electrospinning method, which can present numerous advantages, as described above. Additionally, in all those reports, the Ag functionalization was achieved by blending the Ag nanoparticles with the PSU polymer into the initial electrospinning solution.…”

Green Fabrication of Anticorrosive, Antibacterial, and SERS Active Nanohybrid Coatings by Dual-Spinneret Electrospinning

“…NOSK (GenBank: KM241862). 18 The water used in the experiments was deionized using a Millipore Milli-Q ultrapure water system. All chemicals were used without further purification.…”