For a long time, the emergence of microbial drug resistance due to the abuse of antibiotics has greatly reduced the therapeutic effect of many existing antibiotics. This makes the development of new antimicrobial materials urgent. Light-assisted antimicrobial therapy is an alternative to antibiotic therapy due to its high antimicrobial efficiency and non-resistance. Here, we develop a nanocomposite material (Ru@MXene) which is based on Ru(bpy)(dcb)2+ connected to MXene nanosheets by ester bonding as a photothermal/photodynamic synergistic antibacterial material. The obtained Ru@MXene nanocomposites exhibit a strengthened antimicrobial capacity compared to Ru or MXene alone, which can be attributed to the higher reactive oxygen species (ROS) yield and the thermal effect. Once exposed to a xenon lamp, Ru@MXene promptly achieved almost 100% bactericidal activity against Escherichia coli (200 μg/mL) and Staphylococcus aureus (100 μg/mL). This is ascribed to its synergistic photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) capabilities. Consequently, the innovative Ru@MXene can be a prospective non-drug antimicrobial therapy that avoids antibiotic resistance in practice. Notably, this high-efficiency PTT/PDT synergistic antimicrobial material by bonding Ru complexes to MXene is the first such reported model. However, the toxic effects of Ru@MXene materials need to be studied to evaluate them for further medical applications.

In this study, a naked-eye visible and fluorescenceon Ag + probe based on two-dimensional material MXene was successfully constructed. This study investigated the π−π and dispersive interactions between MXene and rhodamine-6G, and the reduction and growth of silver ions on the MXene surface. The characterization by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed our conjecture about this process. This probe shows competent highly selective real-time detection of Ag + in aqueous solution with a 0.035 μM detection limit, which is also capable of Ag + sensing in living cells. Comparing the fluorescence response of the probe to silver ions in the presence of other metal ions, it is confirmed that the probe has good selectivity to silver ions. In particular, this probe can also be carried out to detect and track Ag + levels in living cells. The discoveries provide fresh insights into the detection and analysis of silver ions in environmental and biological samples. Meanwhile, this method also provides ideas for constructing MXene-based sensing platforms.