LAUSR

Abstract Nanocomposite materials containing zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) have demonstrated to be very useful in medical, cosmetic and food industries because of their excellent antibacterial properties. Herein, a facile method are reported for the assembling of ZnO NPs onto the polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) stabilized polystyrene (PS) microspheres to form raspberry-like PS/ZnO composite particles. ZnO NPs is directly obtained by adding the base solution to the aqueous mixture, which contains the ZnO precursor and PS microspheres. We ascribe the success of our strategy to the interaction between ZnO precursor and PVP which is adsorbed on the PS microspheres. In addition, our approach is simple and flexible in controlling the size and content of ZnO NPs on the PS microspheres. More significantly, the resultant PS/ZnO composite particles exhibit extraordinary antibacterial activity against both gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli).