Plant Mediated Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles and their Potential Applications as Photocatalyst and Antibacterial Agents

Abstract

In the present work, two different methods (sol-gel and biological) were adopted for synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized for its optical, structural, photocatalytic, biological activities. Both synthesized nanoparticles demonstrated a wurtzite hexagonal structure. The morphological analysis revealed that most of the particles spherical shape. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized nanoparticles was determined through the degradation of acid black 1 dye in which the biosynthesized ZnO NPs provided good performance as compared to that the chemically synthesized ZnO NPs. Furthermore, antibacterial activity, the zone of inhibition of bacterial growth was higher in the biosynthesized ZnO NPs and also antioxidant activity.