Hydrogen bond-bridged phosphorene flexible film for photodynamic inhibiting Staphylococcus aureus

Antibiotics are a widely used and effective treatment for bacterial infections. However, bacteria can gradually evolve during infection, leading to developing resistance to antibiotics, which renders previously effective treatments ineffective. Finding a useful and convenient manner to treat bacterial infections is a great challenge. Here, we report a flexible hydrogen-bond-bridged phosphorene film with photodynamic antibacterial properties and excellent mechanical properties, fabricated from electrochemical exfoliation of black phosphorus (BP). When illuminated under 700 nm light, the hydrogen bond-bridged phosphorene flexible film is capable of converting ground-state triplet oxygen (O₂) into excited-state singlet oxygen (¹O₂), destroying the structure of the membrane of Staphylococcus aureus, and eventually leading to bacterial death, via breaking the C=C of unsaturated fatty acids within the bacterial cell membrane after the reaction between ¹O₂ and unsaturated fatty acids, thus realizing a highly efficient antibacterial approach, which is supported by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) technique. This work establishes an effective phototherapy platform for treating bacterial traumatic infections.