Light and Hydrogels: A New Generation of Antimicrobial Materials

Nosocomial diseases are becoming a scourge in hospitals worldwide, and new multidrug-resistant microorganisms are appearing at the forefront, significantly increasing the number of deaths. Innovative solutions must emerge to prevent the imminent health crisis risk, and antibacterial hydrogels are one of them. In addition to this, for the past ten years, photochemistry has become an appealing green process attracting continuous attention from scientists in the scope of sustainable development, as it exhibits many advantages over other methods used in polymer chemistry. Therefore, the combination of antimicrobial hydrogels and light has become a matter of course to design innovative antimicrobial materials. In the present review, we focus on the use of photochemistry to highlight two categories of hydrogels: (a) antibacterial hydrogels synthesized via a free-radical photochemical crosslinking process and (b) chemical hydrogels with light-triggered antibacterial properties. Numerous examples of these new types of hydrogels are described, and some notions of photochemistry are introduced.