Modelling the growth of hydrothermally synthesised bactericidal nanostructures, as a function of processing conditions.

In recent times, large research focus has been placed on nanostructured materials as a method of killing bacteria. Previous work in this area has found that hydrothermally synthesised TiO2 nanostructures show antibacterial behaviour against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria strains. Various sources postulate that certain surface properties, such as wettability and structure dimensions are responsible for, and influence bactericidal efficiency of nanostructured surfaces. Our most recent work found that bactericidal efficiency is statistically linked to nanostructure height, leading to the demand for a method of predicting and designing nanostructure height prior to fabrication. This work uses experimental data from hydrothermal synthesis processes, in combination with IBM SPSS Statistics to form a prediction of nanostructure height, as a function of hydrothermal process parameters (NaOH concentration, reaction time and reaction temperature). Experimental validation shows that the model has a 0.5-8.5% error, accurately predicting the height of TiO2 structures formed via hydrothermal synthesis. In addition, these samples exhibited bactericidal behaviour against both S. aureus and P. aeruginosa bacterial cells.