Visible light antibacterial potential of cement mortar incorporating Cu-ZnO/g-C 3 N 4 nanocomposites.

In this work, a hybrid Cu-ZnO/g-C 3 N 4 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-C 3 N 4 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-C 3 N 4 nanocomposites. A possible bactericidal mechanism was proposed based on the active species trapping experiments, verifying that the photogenerated holes (h + ) and ˙O 2 - radicals were the main active species.