Nested seaweed cellulose fiber deposited with cuprous oxide nanorods for antimicrobial activity.

Bird's nest type architectural network of cellulosic nanofibers was extracted, with nearly 34% yield, from green filamentous seaweed Chaetomorpha antennina using mild bleaching agent. Nanorods of cuprous oxide (Cu2O) were grown over the porous sheet, prepared from the seaweed cellulose, by one step hydrothermal method. The seaweed cellulose and Cu2O nanorods deposited seaweed cellulose sheets, were characterized by XRD, SEM-EDX, FT-IR, TGA and tensile test. XRD revealed that seaweed cellulose acted as reducing agent, reducing CuO to Cu2O. Morphology showed that the average diameter of seaweed cellulose and deposited Cu2O nanorods were 30 nm and 90 nm, respectively. Cuprous oxide nanorods deposited seaweed cellulose sheet gave very good antibacterial activity towards gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus thermophilis) and gram-negative (Pseudomonas aeruginous, Escherichia coli) microbes. The Cu2O nanorods deposited seaweed cellulose sheet can be viewed to have great potential in biomedical, packaging, biotechnological, textile, water treatment and pharmaceutical applications.