The water and liquid repelling materials due to their low surface energy and specific nanometer and micrometer scale roughness have particular interest due to the great variety of potential applications ranging from self-cleaning surfaces to microfluidic devices. Natural plant-based polymer hydrophobic coatings have several engineering and biomedical applications. In this study, natural plants such as Aloe vera and Acalypha indica were used for preparation of polystyrene hydrophobic film by the dip-coating method. The effects of Aloe vera and Acalypha indica extract on the morphological, structural, optical and antibacterial properties of as-prepared polystyrene thin films were studied. FTIR spectra were carried out to ascertain the presence of functional groups in the prepared polymeric film. Contact angle measurement showed that the PS/ Aloe vera has higher anti-wetting property (CA = 112°) compared to PS/ Acalypha indica (CA = 104°), which could be confirmed by the surface morphology analysis. Furthermore, the effective antibacterial activity against Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus was compared by agar-well diffusion method. The observed result reports, PS with Aloe vera film exhibit higher hydrophobic with antibacterial activity compared to PS with Acalypha indica film. In addition, the PS/ Aloe vera coated cotton maintained their repellent properties against various liquids for 10 h, while PS/ Acalypha indica coated cotton exhibit anti-wetting property for 4 h. These findings open up new avenues for the preparation of hydrophobic film for various biomedical applications.
The development of plant-based photocatalyst with a minimum time of irradiation for water-soluble dye disposal from industries is a great significance to unravel water pollution. In the present work, the sol-gel synthesis method was employed for the synthesis of zinc oxide nanoparticles using Pluronic F127 and Aloe vera as dispersing media. A hexagonal wurtzite structure and surface morphology confirmed by XRD and FE-SEM analysis. The infrared study was applied to substantiate the acceptable compounds within the nanoparticles and phytochemicals presence within the extract. From the DRS spectra, Bandgap energy of ZnO nanoparticles (3.22eV) was decreased to 2.89eV by blending of Aloe vera and Pluronic F127 into ZnO. The photocatalytic action of different combinations of ZnO was examined against malachite green dye under UV light and visible light irradiation. Upto 95% degradation was achieved for ZnO/Aloe/PF127 with a minimum time of UV light exposure. All combinations of ZnO showed effective bactericidal activity against multi-drug resistance of E.coli, S.aureus, B.subtilis, and P.aeruginosa. These findings proved the overwhelming photocatalytic and antibacterial activity of ZnO samples, which might be used as effective remediation to treat textile dye wastewater.
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