Comparative Study of the Ethanolic and Aqueous Avicennia marina Mangrove Extracts on the Biosynthesis of AgCl@TiO2 Nanocomposite

Abstract

The biosynthesis of nanomaterials is an important aspect of nanotechnology due to its cost-effective and eco-friendly procedure. The present study was carried out to fabricate AgCl@TiO2 nanocomposite using the aqueous and ethanolic leaf extracts of Avicennia marina mangrove plant as a reducing and stabilizing agent (RSA). The effect of aqueous and ethanolic leaf extracts with different concentrations on biosynthesis of AgCl@TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) was systematically studied by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-visible DRS) and fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR). The results illustrated the successful synthesis of AgCl@TiO2 nanocomposite without any impurity phase using aqueous extract. AgCl NPs were uniformly distributed on the surface of TiO2. The absorption intensity of AgCl@TiO2 with a bandgap energy of 2.95 was improved both in the UV and VL region and displayed stronger absorption compared with pure TiO2. FTIR analysis confirmed that the biosynthesized AgCl@TiO2 by using aqueous leaf extract was not just an easy physical mixture of Ag and TiO2 species but it was a molecular-level combining of Ti–O and Ag–O domains in the nanocomposite.