Piezocatalytically enhanced antibacterial and antibiofilm performance of biogenic vanadium nanoparticles from Pasteurella aerogenes.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and environmental pollution are escalating global threats necessitating the development of sustainable, multifunctional nanomaterials. This study reports, to the best of our knowledge, the first eco-friendly biosynthesis of vanadium nanoparticles (VNPs) using the metal-tolerant bacterium Pasteurella aerogenes. The bacterium demonstrated remarkable tolerance to vanadium (up to 20 mM), facilitating the enzymatic reduction and stabilization of predominantly spherical, crystalline VNPs (20-80 nm), confirmed by FESEM, TEM, EDX, DLS, and XRD. Optimization studies identified ethanol-mediated lysis followed by calcination at 250 °C as the ideal synthesis condition. The VNPs exhibited high piezocatalytic activity, achieving 88.0% methylene blue degradation under ultrasonic activation, primarily driven by hydroxyl radicals (˙OH), with pseudo-first-order kinetics confirmed at the optimal temperature (60 °C, k app = 0.1933 min-1). The enhanced activity under ultrasonication is consistent with acoustic-driven piezocatalytic mechanisms supported by published evidence for vanadium oxide piezoelectric behavior. Furthermore, ultrasonicated VNPs demonstrated potent concentration-dependent antibacterial and antibiofilm efficacy against multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and extensively drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, achieving >95% biofilm inhibition at 125 µg mL-1 for both pathogens. These findings establish biogenic VNPs as a promising nanoplatform for pollutant remediation and AMR mitigation, pending further in vivo validation.