Comparison of different iron oxides for degradation of tetracycline anti-bacterial drug

Abstract

Nanomaterials have a wide range of applications including novel biomedical studies are devoted to improving the functionality and effectively of traditional and unmodified systems, both drug carriers and common scaffolds for tissue engineering or advanced hydrogels for wound healing purposes. In this regard, metal oxide nanoparticles show great potential as versatile tools in biomedical science. In particular, iron oxide nanoparticles with different shape and sizes hold outstanding physiochemical characteristics, such as high specific area and structure that make them unique nanomaterials to be used in diverse aspects of medicine and biological systems. The challenges associated with the uncontrolled presence of antibiotics such as tetracycline in the environment have necessitated their removal through different techniques. Tetracycline is hard to degrade in living organisms and can even be converted to more toxic substances. In this article different type of iron oxides were subjected to photo degradation of antibacterial drug Tetracycline under UV light illumination and direct sunlight and the results were promising to degrade the drug within 20 min. The SEM, TEM, EDAX and XRD for the catalyst were characterized to confirm the presence of iron oxide, the size and shape of the particle. The kinetics of photo degradation of tetracycline followed the pseudo-first-order mechanism, proceeding through hydroxyl radicals generated under illumination. Moreover, the photo generated hydrogen peroxide could lead to heterogeneous photocatalytic processes on the surface of iron oxide nanoparticles; additionally generating hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl radicals enables photo degradation of tetracycline.