Abstract
Antibacterial activities of sulfonated styrene-grafted polypropylene fabric and its metallic complexes against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were evaluated by a viable cell counting method. After styrene was grafted to polypropylene fabric, a sulfonation reaction was carried out. Various metals were introduced to the sulfonated styrene-grafted polypropylene fabric to evaluate their antibacterial activities. Ag complex of sulfonated styrene-grafted polypropylene fabric (3.95 mM SO3H/g) had a strong biocidal effect to kill all bacteria within 30 minutes. From the antibacterial activity of the metallic salts of sulfonated-grafted PP fabric, it was found that Ag complexed fabric had strong biocidal effects for all bac-teria and the other metal complexed fabrics had different antibacterial activity depending on each bacterium.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the Nuclear R&D Program from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Korea.