Environmentally benign preparation of copper oxide nanoparticles and its potential biological and photocatalytic activities

Abstract

The study reports environment friendly facile preparation of multi-functional CuO nanoparticles using Kiwi fruit and assesses its photocatalytic and a variety of biological activities. The PXRD pattern demonstrates that the nanoparticles were members of the pure monoclinic structure with particles having sizes from 8 to 10 nm. They were found to exhibit a porous and sponge-like morphology with almost spherical shape, as seen by TEM and SEM pictures. The peak centered at 608 cm−1 was caused by stretching of Cu–O in FTIR spectrum. The nanoparticles found to possess high photocatalytic degradation activity towards model dye such as methylene blue. The nanoparticles exhibit various potential biological activities. It efficiently suppresses the 1,1-Dipheny-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical activity. It has antibacterial efficacy against pathogenic bacterial strains such as Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. CuO nanoparticles were investigated for anti-diabetic activity, and they demonstrated excellent α-glucosidase (IC50 of 183 ± 9 μg/ml) and α-amylase (IC50 of 124 ± 6 μg/ml) inhibition effects. The MTT test was used to examine the cytotoxicity of CuO nanoparticles on the HeLa cell line, which showed dose-dependent activity with IC50 value of 303 ± 15 μg/ml, which indicate that they were significantly cytotoxic. Copper oxide nanoparticles improved platelet aggregation and plasma coagulation without exhibiting hemolytic activity. This study demonstrates a quick, simple, low-cost, facile, environmentally benign green synthetic approach for large-scale synthesis of multifunctional CuO nanoparticles.