Highly effective antibacterial zeolitic imidazolate framework-67/alginate fibers

Antibacterial fibers have great potential in many applications including wound dressings, surgical gowns, and surgical sutures, and play an important role in our daily life. However, the traditional fabrication method for the antibacterial fibers shows high cost, complexity, and inferior antibacterial durability. Herein, we report a facile and scalable fabrication of highly effective antibacterial alginate (SA) composite fibers through blend spinning of zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) particles and SA. The fabricated ZIF-67@SA composite fibers show high tensile strength and initial modulus. More importantly, the ZIF-67@SA composite fibers demonstrate excellent antibacterial properties, and the antibacterial efficiency reaches over 99% at ultralow ZIF-67 loading (0.05 wt%). In addition, the ZIF-67@SA fibers show good antibacterial durability even after five laundering cycles. The excellent antibacterial performance of the ZIF-67@SA fibers is attributed to the synergistic effects of the highly effective antibacterial ZIF-67 particles, swelling of alginate, and immobilization of ZIF-67 particles both inside and outside the fiber surface. This work may shed light on the antibacterial mechanism of metal organic frameworks and pave the way for the development of high-performance antibacterial textiles.