Electroporation effect of ZnO nanoarrays under low voltage for water disinfection

Abstract

Abstract It is quite necessary to develop a safe and efficient technique for disinfection of drinking water to avoid waterborne pathogens of infectious diseases. Herein, ZnO nanoarray electrodes with different sizes were investigated for low-voltage and high-efficiency electroporation disinfection. The results indicated that the ZnO nano-pyramid with small tip width and proper length exhibited over 99.9% disinfection efficiency against Escherichia coli under 1 V and a flow rate of 10 mL/min (contact time of 1.2 s). The suitable size of the nanoarray for electroporation disinfection was optimized by establishing the correlation between four kinds of ZnO nanoarrays and their efficiency of electroporation disinfection, which can guide the preparation of next-generation electroporation-disinfecting electrodes.