A Robust Photothermal-Mediated Nanozyme Engineering with Efficient Synergistic Antibacterial Therapy for Wound Healing

Nanozyme hybrids with photothermally mediated catalytic activity have received increasing attention in addressing the challenges of public health events caused by bacterial infections. However, designing the photothermal nanozyme with efficient synergistic antibacterial properties remains a challenge but is desirable. Herein, the prepared CuxO@PDA (CP) showed excellent photothermal properties with the photothermal conversion efficiency of 39.81%. More interestingly, CP also possesses peroxidase-like activity, which could convert H2O2 to •OH, and the catalytic capability was improved under NIR irradiation. The synergistic antibacterial effect between the peroxidase-like activity and photothermal activity of the CP makes the proposed antibacterial therapy able to kill 99.74% of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and 99.82% of Escherichia coli (E. coli). In vivo therapy experiments further showed that the excellent antibacterial ability could be well applied in wound infection treatment. Overall, our work provides insight into the design of high-efficacy photothermal-mediated nanozyme compounds for broad-spectrum antibacterial applications.