Controllable drilling by corrosive Cu₁O_x to access highly accessible single-site catalysts for bacterial disinfection

Precise modulation of local structure will improve the catalytic performance for single-site catalysts (SSCs), by taming electronic structure of supported metals and impacting the adsorption energy of reaction intermediates. In order to modify and strengthen the metal-support interaction, a controllable drilling process induced by atomic Cu₁O_x is presented for fabrication of accessible SSCs. First, the bulk Cu₂O was thermally driven to migrate and diffuse within the tangent graphene oxide membranes (GOM) interface, drilling plenty of channels in the GOM. Then, the volatile and atomic Cu₁O_x species would diffuse through the corroded channels. At last, the Cu₁O_x species with strong causticity would corrode the C-N support by breaking the Cu-O bonds and releasing CO₂. Hence, the atomic Cu species were eventually anchored in the C-N support by coordination with dangling N-rich defects, forming the Cu SSCs. The fabricated Cu SSCs exhibited an excellent performance in sterilizing bacteria. As our results displayed, Escherichia coli (E. coli.) was almost sterilized by Cu SSCs via activating persulfate. Compared to the traditional approaches employed by wastewater treatment plant, our Cu SSCs exhibit much better antibacterial effect, holding a great potential for practical bacterial disinfection.