Engineering Antimicrobial Metal–Phenolic Network Nanoparticles with High Biocompatibility for Wound Healing

Abstract

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a global health threat by causing persistent and recurrent microbial infections. To address this issue, antimicrobial nanoparticles (NPs) with low drug resistance but potent bactericidal effects have been developed. However, many of the developed NPs display poor biosafety and their synthesis often involves complex procedures and the antimicrobial modes of action are unclear. Herein, a simple strategy is reported for designing antimicrobial metal‒phenolic network (am-MPN) NPs through the one-step assembly of a seeding agent (diethyldithiocarbamate), natural polyphenols, and metal ions (e.g., Cu2+) in aqueous solution. The Cu2+-based am-MPN NPs display lower..