RESEARCH ARTICLE TiO 2 films by sol‐gel spin‐coating deposition with microbial antiadhesion properties Luigi Scrimieri 1,2 | Antonio Serra 1 | Daniela Manno 1 | Pietro Alifano 3 | Salvatore Maurizio Tredici 3 | Matteo Calcagnile 3 | Lucio Calcagnile 1 1 CEnter of Applied Physics, DAting and Diagnostics (CEDAD), Department of Mathemathics and Physics “Ennio De Giorgi” , University of Salento, Lecce, Italy 2 Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy 3 Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Tecnologies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy Correspondence L. Scrimieri, Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. Email: luigi.scrimieri@unisalento.it Intensive use of antibiotics induced adaptations in bacteria, which developed antibi- otic resistance. This is becoming a serious health problem, particularly in the hospital, food industry, or public transport. It is also important to produce surfaces that not only are bactericidal but also prevent adhesion and the consequent biofilm formation, which can make the bacteria resistant to conventional disinfection methods. In this work, a simple and inexpensive method to obtain surfaces TiO 2 film coated has been realized to prevent attachment and bacterial proliferation on surfaces. The synthesis and deposition procedure has been finalized to the realization of a uniform coating, whose physical, morphological, and structural features are suitable to inhibit the proliferation of the bacteria and in particular the adhesion of the biofilm. The suitabil- ity of the obtained coating has been attested by RBS, X‐ray diffraction (XRD), SEM, UV‐vis, and Raman techniques. The obtained coatings were homogeneous anatase titania films with an excellent adherence to the substrate and a transmittivity higher than 80% in the visible region. The results show that the TiO 2 films considerably reduce microbial contamination on the surface (~98% reduction) feature that makes this coating suitable for antibacterial applications. KEYWORDS bacterial adhesion, sol‐gel, spin coating, TiO 2 films 1 | INTRODUCTION One of the problems of our society is the development of antibiotic‐ resistant bacteria 1 ; it is therefore necessary to have antibacterial surfaces, 2 especially in certain contexts such as hospitals, the food industry, and public transport, in order to reduce as far as possible the use of antibiotics and chemical compounds, potentially harmful to human health. Not only it is important, however, that these surfaces are antibacterial, but also it is necessary to produce materials that do not allow the adhesion of microorganisms and the formation of biofilms. 3 Many bactericidal coatings have been proposed because they can assure a long‐term bactericidal activity. Furthermore, the coating must have the characteristics of being biocompatible so as not to induce cytotoxic responses in eukaryotic cells. Among all the materials, the TiO 2 has the characteristics of being inert and biocompatible and is one of the most studied because of its intriguing characteristics. 4-6 It is in fact a material that is easy and fast to produce, inexpensive, and safe for health, so much so that it is used in the production of food packaging 7 or sunscreen. 8 Finally, it is an excellent antibacterial material, since it has a broad spectrum of activity against microorgan- isms, including gram‐negative and gram‐positive bacteria and fungi, and more importantly, titania‐polymer nanocomposites are intrinsi- cally environmentally friendly and exert a noncontact biocidal action. 9 Producing antibacterial surfaces can be done through three differ- ent strategies: release of antibacterial agents, contact killing, and antiadhesion surface. 2 The first method has the disadvantage of the limited amount of antibacterial agent present in the film. The other Received: 6 May 2019 Revised: 3 July 2019 Accepted: 15 August 2019 DOI: 10.1002/sia.6703 Surf Interface Anal. 2019;1–8. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sia 1