Dear Colleagues,

The areas to be covered in this Special Issue include innovative ideas, procedures, and up-to-date composites leading to environmental biological and pollutant cleaning under light or in the dark. Pathogen inactivation kinetics has evolved in recent years going from semiconductors to doped metal semiconductors and more recently to oxide/metal surface releasing highly oxidative cations. In this way, innovative materials have contributed to the acceleration of pathogen destruction.

The materials and procedures addressed should provide information that reveals a practical potential when applied as colloidal dispersions or surfaces prepared by sputtering methods, physical vapor deposition (PVD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and atomic layer deposition (ALD). The kinetics of bacterial processes and the mechanism should be stated in a clear and detailed manner. The same consideration is valid for catalysts/photocatalysts useful in the abatement of environmental recalcitrant pollutant nod degraded by biological treatments in municipal plants. The characterization of the catalyst surface properties responsible for their activity should be reported in each case.

 Films presenting relevant environmental properties and kinetics are of special importance in environmental processes since they allow designing continuous processes not needing the separation of the catalyst and the media after the cleaning process. These films should be reported in relation to their adherence to the substrate, mechanical resistance to friction, thermal stability, and long operational lifetime. This type of research is an area of recent growth.

In this Special Issue, we welcome studies addressing the inactivation of Gram+ or Gram- bacteria, viruses, fungi, and algae. Catalytic and photocatalytic materials leading to the inactivation of biological toxic agents in the dark without the need for external energy source (light, temperature) are also welcome. This type of materials has the advantage of being able to lead to environmental cleaning under mild conditions. Studies should report on the surface properties responsible for bacterial/pollutant abatement describing the size, shape of the catalytic sites, surface atomic composition, surface hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, surface charge, roughness and surface, and bacterial functional groups. Reports related to 2D surfaces showing the application potential of this up-to-date technology are of topmost interest.

Dr. John Kiwi
Dr. Francesca Petronella
Dr. Gcina Mamba
Dr. Christophe Ruis Espirito Santo
Dr. Irina Levchuk
Guest Editor

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• pathogen inactivation
• self-sterilizing films
• preparation of catalyst
• evaluation of bactericidal kinetics
• catalyst surface properties
• bacteria
• E. coli
• MRSA
• S. epidermis
• fungi
• Candida albicans
• virus
• corona virus
• cytotoxicity self-cleaning surfaces
• photocatalysis
• colloidal deposition of photocatalysts
• hospital-acquired infections (HAI)
• bacterial inactivation mechanism
• environmental cleaning/depollution
• self-cleaning surfaces
• nano-particulate semiconductor films doped or not
• dark and light activated environmental processes
• TiO₂
• ZnO
• CuO
• Ag₂O and composite binary/ternary materials
• recalcitrant pollutant abatement (either NPs or films)