Green approach to synthesize MnxZn1-xO nanocomposite with enhanced photocatalytic, fluorescence and antibacterial activity

Abstract

Green approach to synthesize MnxZn1-xO [x ​= ​0.05 (MNZ†), 0.1 (MNZ1), 0.2 (MNZ2), 0.3 (MNZ3), and 0.4 (MNZ4)] nanocomposites via co-precipitation method under the controlled condition at pH∼8–9 and its application was found in multidimension like photocatalytic, fluorescence and antibacterial activity. The X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Furrier Transform Infrared (FT-IR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV–Vis absorption and Fluorescence spectroscopy techniques were used for the characterization of the prepared nanocomposite. The most thrilling phenomena is that MNZ catalyst have promising fluorescence characteristics with contains mixture of Mn(II)/Mn(III) and also good agreement with XRD, which differ from other Mn based ZnO. The result shows that the MnxZn1-xO (x ​= ​0.1) (MNZ1) catalyst exhibits remarkable photo catalytic activity (rate k ​= ​61.88 ​× ​10−3min−1) for photo-oxidation of Naphthol Orange (NO) under sunlight irradiation compared to other compositions of MNZ and ZnO. The optical band gap of MNZ1 was found 2.85eV which suggest that it’s an excellent photocatalyst under sunlight and shows outstanding reusability without any loss of activity. The phase structure of MNZ1 was Wurtzite type hexagonal and the average crystallite size was 16.41±1nm at [101] measured from Scherrer equation. The grain size of MNZ1 was found to be 100±5nm at 50KX and it looks flex type shape. It also shows excellent antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacteria and Gram-negative bacteria by agar well diffusion, Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) methods and found that MNZ1 has good antibacterial activity against S. aureus compared with its parent ZnO and MnCl2.