Amino‐terminated hyperbranched polymer functionalized graphene oxide with in situ trapped silver nanoparticles for high‐performance antibacterial nonwoven fabric.

Antibacterial fabric with high thermal stability and mechanical strength is important for personalized protection, especially under the background of coronavirus pandemic (COVID‐19). This paper presents a facile approach toward high‐efficient antibacterial polypropylene spunbonded nonwoven fabrics (SNFs), which are decorated by a composite of graphene oxide embedded with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs/GO) through dip‐coating and in situ reduction effect of pre‐introduced amino‐terminated hyperbranched polymer (HBP‐NH2). Typically, HBP‐NH2 was grafted onto the GO nanosheets, then silver ions were trapped and self‐reduced by the HBP‐NH2 to generate silver nanoparticles decorated GO. The produced AgNPs are uniformly dispersed on the GO with a size of 13 nm. As an antibacterial coating, the Ag/GO composite could tightly wrap the SNFs fibers through the dip‐padding method, capable of enhancing the thermal stability and mechanical property of SNFs. The treated SNFs exhibited excellent antibacterial activities (~99.9%) against both Echerisia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, promising important potential for biomedical and personal protection applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]