Precise phase adjustment and antibacterial property of copper sulfide particles in confined mesoporous silica nanoreactor

Herein, a confined vulcanization strategy is proposed to construct copper sulfides-loaded dual-mesoporous silica nanospheres (CuxSy@DMSNs) with various crystal phases for reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated and photothermal antibacterial application.

With the pore confinement of DMSNs, the crystal phases of copper sulfides including CuS, Cu9S5 and Cu1.96S can be easily controlled by changing the vulcanization temperature. The relationships between the crystal phases and photothermal properties as well as peroxidase-like activity of copper sulfides were systematically investigated. Results show that the obtained CuS@DMSNs exhibited higher photothermal ability with remarkable photothermal conversion efficiency of 36.86% in the second near-infrared region (NIR-II) and better peroxidase-like activity, compared to those of Cu9S5@DMSNs and Cu1.96S@DMSNs.