Hand-powered interfacial electric-field-enhanced water disinfection system

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hand-powered-interfacial-electric-field-enhanced-water-disinfection-system
Hand-powered interfacial electric-field-enhanced water disinfection system

Data availability

All data supporting the findings of this study are presented in the Article and its Supplementary Information. Bulk RNA-seq data are available via Gene Expression Omnibus under accession no. GSE305452. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Distinguished Young Scholars of China (grant no. 22325201 to X.D.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 22302033 to Z.C., 22178233 to J.G., 82172299 to Y.L. and 52202214, 52573243 to T.W.), the National Excellent Young Scientists Fund (grant no. 00308054A1045 to J.G.) and the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2022YFA0912800 to J.G.). Additional support was provided by the Talents Program of Sichuan Province, the Double First-Class University Plan of Sichuan University (to J.G.), the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (grant no. SKLPME 2020-03-01 to J.G.), the Tianfu Emei Program of Sichuan Province (grant no. 2022-EC02-00073-CG to J.G.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. SCU2025D014 to J.G.), the Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Leather Chemistry and Engineering, and the National Engineering Research Center of Clean Technology in Leather Industry (to J.G.), the Hubei Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (grant no. 2022CFA068 to Y.L.) and the Hubei Public Health Youth Talents Program (to Y.L.). We acknowledge the assistance of the staff at the Analytical and Testing Center of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, the College of Biomass Science and Engineering of Sichuan University and K. Cai, B. Hu and K. Zhou from Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention for their assistance. The numerical calculations in this Article were performed at the Computing Center in Xi’an. We thank Xiaqi Wang for the illustrations in Fig. 1a.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Zhidi Chen, Yajing Zhang, Panjing Lv.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Zhidi Chen, Tongwei Wu, Jianing He, Jinyan Du, Qianbao Wu, Jinlong Yang, Yiming Zhang, Yanning Zhang, Chunhua Cui & Xu Deng

  2. Guangdong Key Laboratory of Durability in Coastal Civil Engineering, College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Zhidi Chen

  3. BMI Center for Biomass Materials and Nanointerfaces, National Engineering Laboratory for Clean Technology of Leather Manufacture, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Leather Chemistry and Engineering, College of Biomass Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Yajing Zhang, Gonghua Hong & Junling Guo

  4. Department of Pathogen Biology, School of Basic Medicine, Tongji Medical College and State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Severe Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Panjing Lv & Yan Li

  5. Key Laboratory of Advanced Technologies of Materials, Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China

    Qiangqiang Sun

  6. Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wuhan, China

    Fei He

  7. Analysis and Testing Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Hongyu Zhu

  8. Shenzhen Institute for Advanced Study, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, China

    Xu Deng

Authors

  1. Zhidi Chen
  2. Yajing Zhang
  3. Panjing Lv
  4. Tongwei Wu
  5. Jianing He
  6. Jinyan Du
  7. Qiangqiang Sun
  8. Qianbao Wu
  9. Jinlong Yang
  10. Yiming Zhang
  11. Yanning Zhang
  12. Fei He
  13. Chunhua Cui
  14. Gonghua Hong
  15. Hongyu Zhu
  16. Yan Li
  17. Junling Guo
  18. Xu Deng

Contributions

X.D. and Z.C. conceived and designed the experiments. Z.C. designed, synthesized and characterized the IEFE system. Z.C., Yajing Zhang and J.H. performed the water disinfection and mechanism experiments. P.L. conducted the experiments involving fungi, viruses and parasites. T.W. and Yanning Zhang performed the computational simulations and assisted with data analysis. J.D., Q.S. and C.C. contributed to the investigation of the catalytic mechanism of the IEFE system. Q.W. and H.Z. carried out the EPR experiments. J.Y. and Yiming Zhang assisted in the fabrication of the IEFE device. F.H. provided suggestions related to microbiology. X.D., Z.C. and Yajing Zhang jointly conceived, designed and optimized the figures. G.H. provided suggestions related to figure design. X.D., J.G. and Y.L. supervised the project. Z.C., Yajing Zhang and P.L. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yan Li, Junling Guo or Xu Deng.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

X.D. and Z.C. are inventors on a patent application (China, ZL 2023 1 0743387.9) relating to the IEFE system described in this work. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Nanotechnology thanks Kurt Kolasinski and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Design and characterization of the IEFE system.

a, Design principle of the IEFE system. b, SEM images and corresponding 3D models showing pristine SiO2 and SiO2@NFAu particles (scale bars, 500 nm). c, TEM-EDS results and HRTEM images of SiO2@NFAu (scale bars, 200 nm; HRTEM scale bars, 10 nm and 2 nm). The yellow arrows in b and c indicate Au NPs. The blue arrows and lines in c indicate the lattice of the Au NPs.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Disinfection performance of the IEFE system at elevated temperature.

a, Comparison of the disinfection performance of the IEFE system at 20 °C and 50 °C, demonstrating that thermal energy independently drives the disinfection process. b, Disinfection performance of the IEFE system at 20 °C, 35 °C, and 50 °C under 2000 rpm agitation, showing the strong promoting effect of elevated temperature on catalytic disinfection. For a and b: n = 3 independent measurements, data presented as the means ± SD.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Long-lasting protection of the IEFE system.

a, Schematic diagram and b, Corresponding disinfection performance of SiO2@NFAu after recontamination of the solution (n = 3 independent measurements, data presented as the means ± SD). Panel a created with BioRender.com.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary experimental methods, Figs. 1–35, Tables 1–3 and references.

Supplementary Video 1

Visual demonstration of the IEFE system performing simultaneous water disinfection and nanopowder separation. Hydrophobic particles spontaneously detach from the water surface post-treatment, without filtration or magnetic separation.

Supplementary Video 2

Demonstration of the IEFE device disinfecting real-world water within one minute using manual stirring. The system enables rapid bacterial inactivation and self-separation, allowing immediate collection of clean water.

Source data

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Chen, Z., Zhang, Y., Lv, P. et al. Hand-powered interfacial electric-field-enhanced water disinfection system. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-02033-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-02033-9