Molybdenum sulfide Co-catalytic Fenton reaction for rapid and efficient inactivation of Escherichia coli

Abstract As a typical advanced oxidation technology, the Fenton reaction has been employed for the disinfection, owing to the strong oxidizability of hydroxyl radicals (·OH). However, the conventional Fenton system always exhibits a low H2O2 decomposition efficiency, leading to a low production yield of ·OH, which makes the disinfection effect unsatisfactory. Herein, we develop a molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) co-catalytic Fenton reaction for rapid and highly efficient inactivation of Escherichia coli K-12 (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). As a co-catalyst in the Fe(II)/H2O2 Fenton system, MoS2 can greatly facilitate the Fe(III)/Fe(II) cycle reaction by the exposed Mo4+ active sites, which significantly improves the H2O2 decomposition efficiency for the ·OH production. As a result, the MoS2 co-catalytic Fenton system can reach up to 83.37% of inactivation rate of E. coli just in 1 min and 100% of inactivation rate within 30 min, which increased by 2.5 times than that of the conventional Fenton reaction. Furthermore, the ·OH as the primary reactive oxygen species (ROS) in MoS2 co-catalytic Fenton reaction was measured and verified by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and photoluminescence (PL). It is demonstrated an increased amount of ·OH generated from the decomposition of H2O2 in the presence of MoS2, which is responsible for the rapid and efficient inactivation of E. coli and S. aureus. This study provides a new perspective for rapid and highly efficient inactivation of bacteria in environmental remediation.