Upcycling of Expanded Polystyrene Waste into Multifunctional Antibacterial Platforms for Microbial Control

Plastic wastes have emerged as a great challenge for ecological and environmental governance with the global spread of white pollution. There is an urgent need for the development of an advanced technique for combating plastic contamination. Herein, we developed an N-halamine-modified hyper-cross-linked polystyrene (i.e., EPS-3TDETA-Cl) with the assistance of Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction on the expanded polystyrene (EPS) waste. Subsequently, a multifunctional antibacterial platform was constructed by integrating EPS-3TDETA-Cl with gold nanorods (AuNRs) to achieve synergistic antibacterial performance (>99.999%) in vitro against pathogenic bacteria using Escherichia coli (E. coli) as a model strain while exhibiting good hemocompatibility. The results of the E. coli-infected skin defect therapy revealed that the obtained platform resisted wound bacterial infection, accelerated the healing process, and promoted epithelial regeneration. This strategy provides a new idea for the recycling of plastic waste and the platform would be very promising in the practical biomedical applications.