Antibacterial and photocatalytic properties of Cu2O/ZnO composite film synthesized by electrodeposition

The high antibacterial and photocatalytic activities of Cu2O/ZnO composite films were synthesized through the electrodeposition method. The crystalline phase and microstructure of the film samples were analyzed based on X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The Cu2O/ZnO composite film-50 min has uniform and compact film structure with a large surface area. Compared with neat Cu2O film, the spectral response range of Cu2O/ZnO composite film was clearly enlarged to 265-560 nm, indicating that it had stronger spectral response ability in both UV and visible light. Among all the photocatalytic film samples, the Cu2O/ZnO composite film-50 min showed a better antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli (90.23 %) and Staphylococcus aureus (88.78 %) under fluorescent light. In addition, the Cu2O/ZnO composite film-50 min also exhibited the optimal photocatalytic property for the degradation of formaldehyde (80.33 %) under LED light irradiation. Moreover, the high photocatalytic and antibacterial stability in the cycle experiment indicate that Cu2O/ZnO composite film-50 min could be an excellent semiconductor photocatalytic material with high usability in practical applications.