European hospitals and long-term care facilities were estimated to have a total of 8.9 million healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) occur each year based on data from 2016 and 2017 [1]. An increasing amount of evidence suggests that even with standard environmental cleaning, pathogens can contaminate the inanimate environment of the operating room. Such pathogens can be transferred from the environment onto the hands of personnel, and then to patients, potentially leading to surgical site infections and outbreaks of infection [2]. One possible solution to mitigating this problem is the use of effective antimicrobial coatings on surfaces in operating rooms, surgical tools, textiles, etc. The challenge we have to face as a society is to select coating materials that will offer the right set of properties, among which antibacterial properties will be key, and which will also be cost-effective.

In this work, we conducted a systematic study of the CuAgZr material library (ML), produced using the physical vapour deposition (PVD) technology. After careful calibration of the magnetron co-sputtering variant of the PVD process, we were able to obtain ML with a gradient of ~ 60 at. % on one silicon wafer of each element. Assuming that the alloys should differ from each other by a total of 1 at. %, this translates to ~26,000 alloys. The results of systematic studies of selected alloys aimed at determining the structure, mechanical properties using high-throughput nanoindentation, and antibacterial properties will be presented. The experimental approach used in this work allowed the rapid screening of a large compositional space and identify regions with antibacterial properties and high hardness, which is important from the point of view of the coating lifetime. The results of these studies show the potential of combinatorial and high-throughput materials science in the search for the most promising candidates for coatings for medical applications.

References

[1] C. Suetens, K. Latour, T. Kärki, E. Ricchizzi, P. Kinross, M.L. Moro, B. Jans, S. Hopkins, S. Hansen, O. Lyytikäinen, J. Reilly, A. Deptula, W. Zingg, D. Plachouras, D.L. Monnet, Prevalence of healthcare-associated infections, estimated incidence and composite antimicrobial resistance index in acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities: Results from two european point prevalence surveys, 2016 to 2017, Eurosurveillance. 23 (2018) 1–17.

[2]S. Yezli, F. Barbut, J.A. Otter, Surface contamination in operating rooms: A risk for transmission of pathogens?, Surg. Infect. (Larchmt). 15 (2014) 694–699.