Preparation of antibacterial coating film using ZnO nanoparticles and epoxy resin

The production of antibacterial and antifungal nanocomposites is widely usedin pharmaceutical, health, food, packaging and medical industries. Meanwhile,the epoxy coating film is one of the most commonly used protective coatings inindustrial applications. In this work, ZnO nanoparticles were first synthesized atthree different concentrations. UV-Vis spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering(DLS) analysis were used to study the nanoparticles properties. The results showedthat nanoparticles were synthesized with a mean size of 46 nm at 0.01 M zincsulfate. Then, the nanoparticles were mixed with epoxy at three concentrationsand finally ZnO/epoxy nanocomposite were prepared. X-ray diffraction (XRD)and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirmed the existence and size ofnanoparticles in epoxy film. The disk diffusion method was used to study theantibacterial activity of ZnO-epoxy nanocomposites against Escherichia coli(E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). The results exhibited that theoptimum antibacterial activity was in nanocomposite films with concentration0.01 M of zinc sulfate.