Visible light antibacterial potential of cement mortar incorporating Cu-ZnO/g-C₃N₄ nanocomposites

In this work, a hybrid Cu-ZnO/g-C₃N₄ nanocomposite was synthesized and introduced to fabricate photocatalytic cement mortars by internal mixing. The bactericidal properties of the photocatalytic mortars were explored by using E. coli, S. aureus and P. aeruginosa as a bacteria test strain. The results showed that the Cu-ZnO/g-C₃N₄ nanocomposite had an enhanced harvesting of visible light energy and exhibited excellent stability during the photocatalytic process, which favored a long-term usage performance. The sterilizing efficiency of the photocatalytic cement mortars improved with an increasing content of Cu-ZnO/g-C₃N₄ nanocomposites. A possible bactericidal mechanism was proposed based on the active species trapping experiments, verifying that the photogenerated holes (h⁺) and ˙O₂ ^- radicals were the main active species.