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.