Green synthesis of supermagnetic Fe3O4–MgO nanoparticles via Nutmeg essential oil toward superior anti-bacterial and anti-fungal performance

Abstract

Nowadays, green synthesized nanoparticles have attracted dramatical attention toward themselves due to their outstanding biocompatibility and eco-friendly nature. Herein, we modified Fe3O4–MgO nanoparticles with Nutmeg essential oil toward development of super magnetic nanoparticles with anti-bacterial and anti-fungal features that can be used as recoverable agent. For this matter, both chemically and green synthesized Fe3O4–MgO nanoparticles were compared with each other where the outcome of FTIR, VSM and EDAX analyses showed that addition of Nutmeg essential oil to the system can improve the overall features of synthesized magnetite nanoparticles in the final composition and significantly enhance the saturation magnetization (Ms) from 31.23 emu.g−1 (for chemically synthesized) to 72.29 emu.g−1 (for green synthesized) which shows about 131.47% improvement in the magnetization, while most of green approaches showed adverse effects on the total magnetization. What is more, developed green magnetite nanoparticles showed spherical morphology with very low size of about 10–15 nm. Additionally, the anti-microbial and anti-fungal performance of Nutmeg essential oil and ethanolic/methanolic essence against 8 and 5 diverse bacteria and yeast were evaluated, respectively, where the outcome of these evaluations showed the superior bacteriostatic performance of these Nutmeg derived materials against selected bacteria and yeast even at very low concentrations.