Chem. Res. Chin. Univ. 2013, 29(5), 1011—1015 doi: 10.1007/s40242-013-3046-2 ——————————— *Corresponding author. E-mail: liquanmingjl@163.com Received January 28, 2013; accepted March 24, 2013. Supported by the Fund of Jilin University, China(No.450060491339). © Jilin University, The Editorial Department of Chemical Research in Chinese Universities and Springer-Verlag GmbH Preparation and Characterization of Antibacterial Polyacrylonitrile-based Activated Carbon Fiber Supporting Nano-ZnO LI Quan-ming * College of Quartermaster Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130062, P. R. China Abstract Polyacrylonitrile(PAN)-based activated carbon fiber(PACF) supporting nano-ZnO(PACF /nano-ZnO) was prepared by spin, pretreatment, carbonization, and KOH chemical activation at an activation temperature of 950 °C for 40 min. Nano-ZnO content, distribution and antibacterial properties of the PACF/nano-ZnO were studied. The pore structure and surface properties of the PACF/nano-ZnO were studied by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller(BET), N 2 /77 K isothermal adsorption. The specific surface area increased markedly after the activation process and it was several hundred times greater than that before the process. The PACF/nano-ZnO shows a strong adsorption for Staphylococ- cus aureus(S. aureus) and Escherichia coli(E. coli) and antibacterial activity against them. As an experimental result, antibacterial properties of PACF/nano-ZnO increased with increasing the concentration of nano-ZnO particles, which suggests it is a promising antibacterial material. Keywords Activated carbon fiber; Carbon material; Antibacterial activity; Microstructure 1 Introduction Activated carbon(AC) has long been widely used for puri- fication of waste water and applied in other areas. However, recently AC has been substituted by activated carbon fiber (ACF), and ACF has been widely used in separation, purifica- tion, and catalytic processes due to its extended specific surface area, highly porous structure, high adsorption capacity and surface reactivity [1―7] . Nevertheless, there are still some re- maining problems when the ACF is used to purify drinking water. Masao and co-workers [8] found that bacteria preferably adhere to the solids support made of carbon material, indicating ACF has a good biocompatibility. Bacteria might be bred on ACF during the purification process, and then they become a pollutant. In order to avoid this disadvantage, antibacterial ACF is required [1,3] . Therefore, many efforts have been made to pre- pare metal-containing ACF by various surface treatment me- thods to solve these problems [3,9―11] . It has long been known that silver and its compound have strong inhibitory effects on bacteria [12] . On the other hand, more and more antibacterial materials have been made in recent years. The general bacterial materials are involved with anti- bacterial agents such as metal complexes, silver and other in- organic or organic matrixes treated by adsorbing, grafting or synthesizing methods. Many researchers have found that the interaction of Ag + with thiol groups plays an essential role in bacterial inactivation [12―15] . Some researchers have also found that zinc oxide(ZnO) has a marked antibacterial activity [16,17] . Jones et al. [18] found that ZnO nano-particles had a significantly higher antibacterial effect on Staphylococcus aureus compared with other nano-sized metal oxides. Unfortunately, little work has, however, been done on using ZnO nano-particles to pre- pare antibacterial ACF. It is meaningful to modify and study the microstructure of ACF due to the many advanced features men- tioned above, especially, that of polyacrylonitrile(PAN)-ACF, which has been reported to exhibit a high activity for chemical reaction due to their high nitrogen content. From these points of view, we aimed at preparing antibac- terial ACFs supporting nano-ZnO and evaluating the antibac- terial effect of ACF/nano-ZnO against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus, gram-positive and virulence) and Escherichia coli (E. coli, gram-negative and avirulence). The influence of ZnO on the textural and surface properties of ACF/nano-ZnO was investigated via nitrogen adsorption isotherms, Brunauer- Emmett-Teller(BET) volumetric measurement. 2 Experimental 2.1 Materials Zn(NO 3 ) 2 ·6H 2 O and C 6 H 8 O 7 ·H 2 O were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd., China; Al(NO 3 ) 2 ·9H 2 O was purchased from Shanghai Zhenxin Chemical Co., Ltd., China; polyacrylonitrile powder was obtained from Jilin Chemical Fiber Group Co., Ltd., China; N,N-dimethyl forma- mide(DMF) was purchased from Acros, USA.