Construction of bitter gourd-like Ag-loaded aramid nanofibers aerogel with efficient synergistic adsorption/photocatalytic degradation of crystalline violet and antibacterial activity

Dyes are environmentally detrimental and prevalent pollutants in water. It is crucial to develop materials for water treatment with both adsorption/photocatalytic and antibacterial activity. In this work, bitter gourd-like Ag-loaded aramid nanofibers (ANFs@Ag) aerogel fibers were successfully prepared by a novel wet spinning process, in which the coupling of Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) cluster on the fiber surface could be enhanced by using ANFs as a support carrier. The as-prepared ANFs@Ag aerogel fibers exhibit uniform porous structure with the specific surface area and pore volume being 235–298 m 2 g −1 and 0.54–0.63 m 3 g −1 , respectively, and the photocatalytic activity of ANFs@Ag aerogel fibers could be achieved owing to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect and interband electronic transition of the bitter gourd-like AgNPs layer. The ANFs@Ag aerogel fibers showed high removal efficiency of crystalline violet with up to 98.66% under xenon lamp irradiation due to the synergetic effect of adsorption and photocatalysis. Moreover, bacterial disk diffusion experiments revealed that the ANFs@Ag aerogel fibers have significant antibacterial performance against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus . In addition, the ANFs@Ag aerogel fibers exhibit superior thermal stability due to the loading of AgNPs. This work provides a new strategy for developing highly efficient porous ANFs–aerogel-based fiber composites, and the obtained bitter gourd-like ANFs@Ag composite aerogel fibers will have promising applications in the field of water purification. Graphical abstract