Preparation of antibacterial coating film using ZnO nanoparticles and epoxy resin

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