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BIOPHOTONICS

Plasmon-enabled disinfection

Nature Photonics volume 13, page 308 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 07 May 2019

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The idea is that the surface of the surgical mesh is chemically modified to anchor GNPs tuned to be resonant at the near-infrared wavelength of 800 nm, inside the first transparency window of biological tissues (650–1,100 nm). On illumination with a laser with an emission wavelength that matches the main absorption peak of the GNRs, light-induced heating occurs and the local temperature change damages the biofilm produced by bacteria. Unlike antibiotics, because this damage is caused by a physical means, the bacteria cannot adapt to the treatment and become resistant. Furthermore, the near-infrared irradiation can be performed repeatedly after mesh implantation as many times as necessary.

A proof-of-principle experiment was performed with GNP-anchored meshes deliberately infected with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The Spanish scientists then systematically changed the irradiation conditions (energy fluence and the pulse duration) and evaluated the impact on the number of bacteria. When the mesh was illuminated with a fluence of 15 J cm–2 and pulse duration of 300 ms, the number of bacteria decreased by 97.6%.

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  1. Nature Photonics https://www.nature.com/naturephotonics

    Noriaki Horiuchi

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  1. Noriaki Horiuchi
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Correspondence to Noriaki Horiuchi.

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Horiuchi, N. Plasmon-enabled disinfection. Nat. Photonics 13, 308 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0429-z

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