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Solar-driven efficient heterogeneous subminute water disinfection nanosystem assembled with fingerprint MoS2

Nature Water volume 1, pages 462–470 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Although heterogeneous water disinfection can avoid secondary pollution and other shortcomings in homogeneous systems, its low disinfection efficiency seriously hinders its development. Here we successfully address the aforementioned issues of heterogeneous disinfection by developing discrete nanoflakes of (Al2O3@v-MoS2)/Cu/Fe3O4. Three exciting features are integrated into such a novel structure: bifacial vertically aligned nanofingerprint MoS2 grown on both sides of the light-transparent Al2O3 nanoflakes that can largely absorb sunlight, where both sides can operate simultaneously; a Cu-MoS2 junction that enhances charge separation for the efficient generation of reactive oxygen species; and magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles that have magnetic separation capability and conveniently regenerate after disinfection. The (Al2O3@v-MoS2)/Cu/Fe3O4 nanostructures reported herein exhibit outstanding water disinfection with thorough inactivation of over 5.7 log10 colony-forming units ml−1 Escherichia coli within 1 min in real sunlight (the system thermal effect has little impact on disinfection performances) as well as facile separation and stable long cycle reuse, demonstrating broad application prospects.

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Fig. 1: The synthesis and disinfection operation schematic of (Al2O3@v-MoS2)/Cu/Fe3O4.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of Al2O3@v-MoS2 and (Al2O3@v-MoS2)/Cu.
Fig. 3: Disinfection performance and principle of (Al2O3@v-MoS2)/Cu system.
Fig. 4: Recyclable subminute sunlight disinfection of (Al2O3@v-MoS2)/Cu/Fe3O4.

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Data availability

All data of this study are presented in the article and its supplementary information. Source data are provided with this paper. The source data and relevant data that support the findings can also be accessed through the figshare repository and are freely available for download (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22094465).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. We acknowledge the Stanford facilities, Stanford Nanocharacterization Laboratory and Soft & Hybrid Materials for characterization. We thank A. Boehm for assistance with the biology laboratory and facilities. We thank G. Li for his help with the ICP–MS test. We also thank Y. Zhou from Shiyanjia Lab (www.shiyanjia.com) for the electron paramagnetic resonance analysis and J. Xie from Shanghai Tech University for UV photoelectron spectroscopy measurements.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Tong Wu, Bofei Liu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Tong Wu, Bofei Liu, Chong Liu, Jiayu Wan, Ankun Yang, Kai Liu, Feifei Shi, Jie Zhao, Zhiyi Lu, Guangxu Chen, Allen Pei & Yi Cui

  2. Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Harold Y. Hwang

  3. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Yi Cui

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Contributions

T.W. and B.L. contributed equally to this work. T.W. and Y.C. developed the concept. T.W., B.L. and C.L. synthesized the samples and conducted the disinfection measurements and material characterizations. T.W. completed the material synthesis. J.W. helped with the magnetic modification. A.Y. helped with the Raman measurements. K.L. and F.S. helped with the SEM and XPS measurements. Z.L. helped with the XRD measurements. J.Z. helped with the TEM measurements. G.C. analysed the data. T.W., Y.C., H.Y.H. and A.P. co-wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the whole paper.

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Correspondence to Yi Cui.

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Supplementary Notes 1–4, Figs. 1–18, Tables 1 and 2 and References 1–10.

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Wu, T., Liu, B., Liu, C. et al. Solar-driven efficient heterogeneous subminute water disinfection nanosystem assembled with fingerprint MoS2. Nat Water 1, 462–470 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00079-4

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