Static Electricity Powered Copper Oxide Nanowire Microbicidal
Electroporation for Water Disinfection
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Abstract
Safe water scarcity occurs mostly
in developing regions that also
suffer from energy shortages and infrastructure deficiencies. Low-cost
and energy-efficient water disinfection methods have the potential
to make great impacts on people in these regions. At the present time,
most water disinfection methods being promoted to households in developing
countries are aqueous chemical-reaction-based or filtration-based.
Incorporating nanomaterials into these existing disinfection methods
could improve the performance; however, the high cost of material
synthesis and recovery as well as fouling and slow treatment speed
is still limiting their application. Here, we demonstrate a novel
flow device that enables fast water disinfection using one-dimensional
copper oxide nanowire (CuONW) assisted electroporation powered by
static electricity. Electroporation relies on a strong electric field
to break down microorganism membranes and only consumes a very small
amount of energy. Static electricity as the power source can be generated
by an individual person鈥檚 motion in a facile and low-cost manner,
which ensures its application anywhere in the world. The CuONWs used
were synthesized through a scalable one-step air oxidation of low-cost
copper mesh. With a single filtration, we achieved complete disinfection
of bacteria and viruses in both raw tap and lake water with a high
flow rate of 3000 L/(h路m<sup>2</sup>), equivalent to only 1 s
of contact time. Copper leaching from the nanowire mesh was minimal