For the first time, the effects of microwave and ultrasonic treatments and an alternating electric field on poly(N‐vinyl caprolactam) (PVCL40) both in the original and in the composite with nanoscale anatase have been studied. Comparison of the results of studying the samples by X‐ray diffraction, IR spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) before and after treatments allowed us to identify, and explain the response of objects to different types of effects with a change in their characteristics. Analysis and comparison of the results do not exclude the misorientation of the PVCL40 domains in thin films (microwave processing), which becomes flat‐ordered after their rubbing, the destruction of the PVCL40 and the disorder of the side substituent are found, accompanied by a change in the periodicity chains (microwave processing, electric field), a decrease in the water content in the system (microwave processing) and amorphization of nanoscale anatase (microwave processing, electric field) were revealed. The implementation of the revealed effects as response to microwave, ultrasonic, and electric field treatments on a similar type of polymers with a different composition and structure is not ruled out.
The anatase nanoparticles are stabilized with titanium tetraisopropoxide Ti[OCH(CH 3 ) 2 ] 4 and isopropyl alcohol without surfactants suitable for biological studies. We showed that the hydrodynamic radii in suspensions depend on temperature and the duration of hydrolysis, whereas the composition (a mixture of anatase with brookite, anatase, brookite, and rutile) and the sizes of crystallites (X-ray), nanoparticles, and aggregates (SEM) in the dried state are mainly dependent on the pH of the environment. The nonphase of the samples stems from coherent intergrowth of unit cells of anatase and brookite via geometric and structural complementarity. We found that photocatalytic activity (PCA; Rhodamine 6G model dye under UV radiation) depends on OH/H 2 O ratio (adsorbed), whereas antimicrobial activity (AMA) in the dark depends on an amount of free water on the surface of nanoparticles according to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). We revealed that samples with the smallest sizes of nanoparticles of all levels possess the highest PCA and AMA relative to Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli.
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