Facile Fabrication of ZnO Nanorods with Extremely Strong Photocatalytic Performance and Antibacterial Activity

Abstract

Development of nanomaterials with strong antibacterial action and highly enhanced photocatalytic activity for water purification is of immense interest. ZnO nanorods, with extremely enhanced solar-driven photocatalytic performance and good antibacterial activity, have been fabricated by facile chemical route. The structural properties of the nanomaterial were thoroughly characterized by SEM, TEM, EDX, HRTEM, STEM-HAADF, elemental profiling, XRD and Raman spectroscopy, while the optical and photocatalytic properties were studied by UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. TEM and FESEM showed nanorods with average width and length as 80[Formula: see text]nm and 178[Formula: see text]nm. XRD showed wurtzite ZnO with 27[Formula: see text]nm crystallite size. PL analysis of ZnO nanorods showed peaks at 415[Formula: see text]nm, 439[Formula: see text]nm, 499[Formula: see text]nm and 561[Formula: see text]nm. The fabricated ZnO nanorods exhibited extremely enhanced photocatalytic performance with very high rate constant of 0.201[Formula: see text]min[Formula: see text] for degradation of organic pollutant MB in water under only 15[Formula: see text]min of solar exposure. ZnO nanorods completely inhibited growth of Bacillus oceanisediminis and Escherichia coli at 500[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]g/mL and 700[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]g/mL, respectively. The origin of antibacterial behavior of ZnO nanorods against B. oceanisediminis and E. coli has been investigated using histidine for scavenging ROS, morphological change by SEM and agarose gel electrophoresis. Our results showed that ROS-induced oxidative stress damages cell wall, evident from SEM, and leads to fragmentation of DNA both of which contribute to the antibacterial action of ZnO nanorods. The tentative mechanism of extremely strong photodegradation performance of ZnO nanorods has also been proposed.