Facet nanoarchitectonics of visible-light driven Ag₃PO₄ photocatalytic micromotors: Tuning motion for biofilm eradication

The customized design of micro-/nanomotors represents one of the main research topics in the field of micro-/nanomotors; however, the effects of different crystal facets on micromotor movement are often neglected. In this work, self-propelled amorphous, cubic, and tetrahedral Ag₃PO₄ particles were synthetized using a scalable precipitation method. Their programmable morphologies exhibited different motion properties under fuel-free and surfactant-free conditions and visible light irradiation. Differences in these motion properties were observed according to morphology and correlated with photocatalytic activity. Moreover, Ag₃PO₄ micromotors are inherently fluorescent, which allows fluorescence-based tracking. Furthermore, bacterial biofilms represent a major concern in modern society since most of them are antibiotic resistant. The as-prepared self-propelled particles exhibited morphologically dependent antibiofilm activities toward gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. The enhanced diffusion of the particles promoted biofilm removal in comparison with static control experiments, realizing the possibility of a new class of light-driven biofilm-eradicating micromotors that do not require the use of both H₂O₂ and UV light.