GaOOH Morphology and Antibacterial Effectiveness Based on Variations in pH

Ga₂O_3, an ultrawide-bandgap semiconducting material sees widespread use in optical, pharmaceutical, and other industrial applications. Additionally, as antibiotic resistance grows, interest rises in the antibacterial properties of Ga₂O₃ and other gallium containing compounds. GaOOH is a precursor to Ga₂O₃ with similar physiochemical properties while being simpler to synthesize at scale as it can be produced via low-temperature, hydrothermal means. This work demonstrates how the pH during synthesis of GaOOH can affect the crystal morphology and how morphology in turn affects the antibacterial action of GaOOH nanoparticles. To attain this, gallium salts were mixed with the strong base NaOH to form solutions between 5 and 10 pH then heated: creating GaOOH samples. Examining the morphology of these crystals before using them in antibacterial assays with Staphylococcus Aureus helps define a correlation between morphology and antibacterial effectiveness. These results demonstrate what morphological features contribute to antibacterial effectiveness and how those features can be tuned during synthesis.