Russian scientists  have developed the jacket based on boron nitride, that is able to catch antibiotics out of the solutions. The material removes 100% of preparates for 7-14 days and moreover, it can be used many times. This development will be able to purify waste waters out of antibiotics. The results of researches supported by the Grant of the Russian Scientific  Fund (RSF) have been published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Antibiotics are generally used in medicine and agriculture in order to struggle against pathogenic bacterium and mushrooms. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) within the period of 2000-2015 years their usage in the world grew to 92%.

At the same time in the process of their production and usage the antibiotics often drop into waste waters and that contributes the rise of stability towards these preparates, which in its turn can provide the impossibility of threating even the simple bacterial infection.

The most popular antibiotics polluting waste waters are tetracycline and amoxicillin. For today, it¢s well-known that some microorganisms lost sensibility to them. That¢s why the problem of waste waters purification  is of great value. The scientists from Moscow National Scientific Technological University developed a cheap and high effective multiple preparate to purify waste waters out of antibiotics. The authors synthesized on silicon substrate nanostructured coverings based on hexagonal boron nitride - compounds, where atoms are linked in the type of a six-angle. These “honeycombs” are chemically stable and they are able to keep antibiotics on themselves. The design, recommended by the authors – “exciting layer” covered on substrate – will be very convenient in the usage.

The researchers tested the ability of material  to keep four the most distributed antibiotics for today – tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, amoxillin and  amphotericin B, which are used for struggle with bacteria, such as, staphylococcus aureus, coli and cholera vibrio.

With this aim the coverings from boron nitride have been sinking into solutions with preparates and they defined the time which takes their settling.

The researchers discovered, that the rate of medical preparates catching depends on acidity of sphere and concentration of antibiotics in the solutions, where the experiment took place.

Thus, the full purification of the solution went two times faster in neutral sphere than in acid or alkali ones. It took from 7 to 10 days to remove tetracycline depending on its concentration, ciprofloxacin–from 8 to 11 days,  amoxiline – from 10 to 12 days and amphotericin  B–11-14 days. Besides, the authors showed, that the coverings from boron nitride are easily cleaned out of antibiotics with the help of various organic dissolvers, alcohol among them. After cleaning the material preserves the ability to catch all the mentioned preparates. The effectiveness of the work lowered a little – till 5-15%.