Pathogenic microorganisms must be removed or inactivated before water can be distributed as drinking water and when discharging treated wastewater effluent to natural water bodies. It is known that many pathogenic bacteria, such as E. coli, do not survive when they come into contact with certain metals, such as silver and copper; this concept is applied in certain industries to make touch surfaces resistant to microbial contamination. The major objective of this study is to determine antibacterial activity of microstructure metal materials with high surface area at laboratory scale. Several different metal materials were tested. The results obtained from E. coli indicated that copper foam had the best antibacterial performance compared with other materials. The optimum metal to water ratio was 0.85 g copper foam/100 mL for the treatment of secondary wastewater. The leaching test indicated that the leached copper was within the safe limit. The study suggests that copper foam has the potential to be used in water disinfection application.