Preparation and Antibacterial Property of Copper-loadedActivated Carbon Microspheres

Carbon microspheres (CMs) were prepared viaa hydrothermal method, and then activated with KOH to form activated carbon microspheres (ACMs). Copperloaded activated carbon microspheres (CuACMs) were obtained by the direct immersion in CuCl2 aqueous solution. The structure and morphology of ACMs and Cu-ACMs were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDS, XPS and N2 adsorptiondesorption isotherms. The experimental results show that the copper valence state of Cu-ACMs samples is Cu 2+ ion, and the amount of absorbed copper increases with the increase of copper ion concentration in solution. The addition of ammonia can significantly improve the amount of absorbed copper. The antibacterial activities of asprepared materials measured indicate that the Cu-ACMs have the good activities to kill E. coli and S. aureus. Therefore, Cu-ACMs is a potential candidate as the antibacterial materials in some applications, such as water treatment, gas filtration and microbial contamination, etc.