"Silver has been used for centuries as an antimicrobial to kill harmful bacteria. Ancient civilizations applied the metal to open wounds. Ship captains tossed silver coins into storage barrels to keep drinking water fresh."
https://phys.org/news/2018-10-scientists-deeper-silver-bacteria.html
"Tiny silver particles attach to the DNA of viruses preventing them from replicating. Silver is also an effective oxygen carrier, releasing the oxygen when it comes in contact with the pathogen, killing it. Thirdly, silver disables the enzyme that bacteria, virus and fungus use for metabolism. Due to these basic mechanisms, pathogens do not develop a resistance to nanosilver."
https://www.faim.org/nanosilver-for-bacteria-virus-and-fungus
"Believe it or not, the use of copper for health purposes dates all the way back to Ancient Egypt, and scientists today are still learning about the amazing benefits of copper."
https://www.insider.com/does-copper-kill-germs-and-viruses
"Bacteria and viruses are immediately killed when they land on copper surfaces. Copper releases ions when a microbe is present, and these ions penetrate the cell which destroys the DNA or RNA that makes it impossible for the virus or bacteria to become resistant to the copper. Copper also disables the ability of microbes to pass their genes on to other microbes."
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/entertainment/celebrity/copper-kills-coronaviruses-and-bacteria-but-health-experts-are-not-informed/ar-BB11Angl
"Finding alternatives to antibiotics is one of the biggest challenges facing the research community. Bacteria are increasingly resistant to these drugs, and this resistance leads to the deaths of more than 25,000 around the world. Now, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the University of Grenoble (France), the University of Saarland (Germany) and RMIT University (Australia) have discovered that the mechanical deformation of bacteria is a toxic mechanism that can kill bacteria with gold nanoparticles."
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-physical-mechanism-bacteria-gold-nanoparticles.html
"Tiny gold particles no bigger than a speck of dust can kill bacteria in several ways, says Hong Liang, a professor of materials science and engineering at Texas A&M University. Gold nanoparticles can damage a cell wall from the outside, pass through the wall and attack the bacterium from within, or damage the bacterial docking process and disrupt the supply of nutrients and energy to the cell."
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a12986/to-kill-superbacteria-bring-on-the-bling-16988989/