Microbial pollution and cancer have attracted considerable concern owing to their great threat to public health and safety. Inorganic semiconductor nanostructures show superior chemical and physical properties, especially for exciting photothermal conversion ability. In the past few years, photothermal disinfection has been recognized as an economical and clean method to kill pathogenic bacteria with almost no by-products.

To date, some inorganic nanostructures including black phosphorus, CuS, and Bi2S3 have been widely applied in antibacterial applications or photothermal therapy of cancer cells, which show good photothermal conversion ability. Additionally, some semiconductor nanostructures such as C3N4, TiO2, and Fe3O4 can produce highly reactive oxygen species to kill bacteria or cancer cells with or without irradiation of external exciting light, known as photodynamic or chemodynamic therapy. Thus, synthesis and design of some nanostructures that have photothermal conversion properties and the ability to produce reactive oxygen species are challenging tasks that have wide applications in wastewater treatment (such as antibacterial, organic wastewater treatment), catalysis, and biomedical purposes (such as photothermal/photodynamic/chemo dynamic therapy of cancer cells).

The purpose of this Special Issue is to publish high-quality original research and review articles with a focus on the fabrication and characterization of inorganic nanostructures and their application in the treatment of bacterial pollution, cancer therapy, etc.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Synthesis of nanostructured materials with controlled size and morphologies
• Facile synthetic strategies developed to fabricate novel nanostructures
• Photo-controlled antibacterial applications using nanostructures
• Photothermal destruction of bacteria or cancer cells
• Photodynamic therapy of cancer cells
• Drug delivery for cancer cells
• Controlled releasing of antibacterial agents for treatment of microbial pollution