Antimicrobial surfaces can reduce the spread of bacteria from high-touch surfaces, saving millions of lives worldwide. Antibacterial photocatalytic films, like TiO2, are widely reported but limited in practice because they need high-intensity UV light. More practical but less reported are photocatalysts that work under low-intensity visible light from an indoor lamp. Here, we demonstrate that manganese vanadium oxide (MVO) is an antibacterial photocatalyst that works under light-emitting diode (LED) lights at ∼3000 lux. MVO is an earth-abundant semiconductor with a band gap of 1.7 eV that absorbs visible light to create reactive oxygen species (ROS) in water. ROS reduces bacteria counts by 4 orders of magnitude in 8 h under 9000 lux LED light. The antibacterial effect is significant even in MVO powder and films, which are amenable to large-area fabrication. MVO is a promising candidate for next-generation antimicrobial coatings that are stable, cheap, effective, earth-abundant, and activated by indoor lights.
Keywords: ambient light; antibacterial; photocatalytic; reactive oxygen species; scalable technique.