Using low-temperature plasma to treat the oxidized three-dimensional graphene can significantly improve the sterilization ability of the processed three-dimensional graphene. As a new type of two-dimensional carbon material, 3D graphene has shown great application prospects in many biomedical fields. However, compared with other traditional sterilization drugs/materials such as antibiotics and silver, the sterilization ability of general three-dimensional graphene-based materials is weak. In order to improve its sterilization ability, the usual method is to connect other materials with strong antibacterial ability to the three-dimensional graphene material by chemical means.

However, the chemical treatment process is complicated and may cause environmental and health risks. Researchers used low-temperature plasma to treat oxidized three-dimensional graphene and studied its sterilization effect. They found that the three-dimensional graphene oxide treated by hydrogen plasma can cause nearly 90% of the bacteria to be inactivated at a concentration of 0.02mg/mL. Higher than the sterilization ability of untreated oxidized three-dimensional graphene.

In order to explore the reasons, the researchers performed characterization analysis of the three-dimensional graphene oxide before and after the treatment, such as atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and performed scanning electron microscopy analysis on the processed bacterial samples and found that the plasma Body treatment can not only effectively reduce the three-dimensional graphene and reduce its size, but also increase the surface defects of the oxidized three-dimensional graphene, forming a number of irregular columnar or needle-shaped protrusions, which will lead to the leakage of cell contents and the death of bacteria. .