Exploring the potential of polyethylene terephthalate in the design of antibacterial surfaces.

"Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflict of interest."

"Funding This research is affiliated to the ViBranT project that received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklowdowska-Curie, Grant agreement no 765042. In addition, TC, MS and LRR acknowledge the financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2019 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684), through national funds and where applicable co-financed by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement. The same authors also acknowledge BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020—Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Finally, the authors NA and CS acknowledge CeNTI’25 project co-funded by FITEC, in the framework of Programa Interface."