Photothermal sterilization is a promising and effective treatment method in treating bacterial infection. Generally, a widely employed light source in photothermal sterilization inevitably damages the skin tissue due to the high-intensity irradiation dose. How to provide useful antibacterial outcomes without light-triggered skin damage is a challenge for photothermal sterilization. In this work, a novel antibacterial hydrogel (VAT hydrogel, the abbreviation for vancomycin-agarose-ferric tannate hydrogel) has been successfully constructed by the natural polysaccharide hydrogel (AG) encapsulating ferric tannate (TA-Fe) nanoparticles and vancomycin. The VAT hydrogel exhibited the outstanding photothermal properties and controllable antibiotics release. With the results of antibacterial assays, the VAT hydrogel revealed the superior effectiveness of synergistic wound disinfection by the low-intensity near-infrared light-triggered spatiotemporal antibiotics release and hyperthermia. More importantly, the VAT hydrogels possessed the good biocompatibility. With the outstanding synergistic sterilizing effect and excellent biocompatibility, the VAT hydrogel would be a promising candidate for bacteria-associated wound infections.

光热灭菌是治疗细菌感染的一种有前途和有效的治疗方法。通常，由于高强度照射剂量，在光热灭菌中广泛使用的光源不可避免地损坏皮肤组织。如何在不引起光触发的皮肤损害的情况下提供有用的抗菌效果是光热灭菌的一个挑战。在这项工作中，已成功地通过囊封单宁酸铁（TA-Fe）纳米粒子和万古霉素的天然多糖水凝胶（AG）成功构建了新型抗菌水凝胶（VAT水凝胶，万古霉素-琼脂糖-单宁酸铁酸盐水合物的缩写）。增值税水凝胶具有出色的光热性能和可控的抗生素释放。有了抗菌检测的结果，VAT水凝胶揭示了低强度近红外光触发的时空抗生素释放和热疗的协同伤口消毒效果。更重要的是，VAT水凝胶具有良好的生物相容性。凭借出色的协同杀菌效果和出色的生物相容性，VAT水凝胶将成为细菌相关伤口感染的有前途的候选者。