One of the most-used food contact materials is stainless steel (AISI 304L or AISI 316L), owing to its high mechanical strength, cleanability, and corrosion resistance. However, due to the presence of minimal crevices, stainless-steel is subject to microbial contamination with consequent significant reverb on health and industry costs due to the lack of effective reliability of sanitizing agents and procedures. In this study, we evaluated the noncytotoxic effect of an amorphous SiOxCyHz coating deposited on stainless-steel disks and performed a time-course evaluation for four Gram-negative bacteria and four Gram-positive bacteria. A low cytotoxicity of the SiOxCyHz coating was observed; moreover, except for some samples, a five-logarithm decrease was visible after 1 h on coated surfaces without any sanitizing treatment and inoculated with Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Conversely, a complete bacterial removal was observed after 30 s-1 min application of alcohol and already after 15 s under UVC irradiation against both bacterial groups. Moreover, coating deposition changed the wetting behaviors of treated samples, with contact angles increasing from 90.25° to 113.73°, realizing a transformation from hydrophilicity to hydrophobicity, with tremendous repercussions in various technological applications, including the food industry.
Keywords: SiOxCyHz coating; antibacterial activity; food contact material; hydrophobicity; stainless steel.