Effect of CuO Nanoparticle Variation on the Green Synthesized ZnO/CuO Nanocomposites for Antibacterial Activities

Abstract

Plant extracts play critical role in synthesizing nanomaterials for a wide range of applications in human health and managing environmental pollutions. The present work focuses on varying CuO NP’s concentration in ZnO/CuO nanocomposites (NC) synthesized with orange peel extracts (ZnO/CuO WE NC) for its antibacterial activities. The concentration of CuO with respect to ZnO NP fixed in 10:10, 10:20, 10:30, and 10:40. The as-synthesized NC is characterized using UV-Vis, FTIR, XRD, and SEM spectroscopes. Accordingly, the UV-Vis result reveals that the absorption spectra range from 312-328 nm confirming the incorporation of extract to provide strong absorption peaks along with the increasing concentration of CuO in the nanocomposite while it energy band gap of ZnO/CuO WE NC was narrowed from 3.97 to 3.78 eV. FTIR analysis revealed that the stretching vibration of Zn-O and Cu-O are observed around 480 cm-1 and 600 cm-1, respectively in all ratios of WE NC. XRD indicated that the formation of hexagonal wurtzite structure and the crystallite size recorded in 24.12 to 3.17 nm. The SEM image showed the morphology of 10:20, 10:30, and 10:40 are aggregated, smooth, polished, and smaller size compared to 10:10 ZnO/CuO WE NC. The antibacterial activities of 10:10, 10:20, 10:30, and 10:40 ZnO/CuO WE NC were remarkable especially, 10:40 ZnO/CuO WE NC provided strong activity against P. aeruginosa. Thus, the assynthesized 10:40 ZnO/CuO WE NC is so profound to combat bacterial infectious diseases.