Abstract
The nanostructured zinc-doped cobalt ferrites (ZnxCo1−xFe2O4 where x ranges from 0.0 to 0.6 with the step of 0.2) were prepared by combustion method using curd as a green fuel. The prepared nanoparticles were further characterized using XRD, SEM with EDAX, TEM, FTIR, UV-DRS, and luminescence spectroscopy. From the XRD, it shows that these nanomaterials exhibit average crystallite size in the range ∼12-21 nm with inverse cubic spinel structure. The agglomerated and spherical structure of the nanoparticles is confirmed by SEM and TEM. The vibrational stretching modes of tetrahedral (582 cm−1) and octahedral (385 cm−1) sites were confirmed by FTIR. Further, density functional theory (DFT) analysis was carried out in order to study the electronic properties of cobalt ferrite and zinc-doped cobalt ferrite nanostructures. The band gap results for pure CoFe2O4 and Zn-doped CoFe2O4 nanoparticles were closer to the experimental values. The luminescence spectrum shows peaks correspond to violet, blue, green, yellow and orange emission. The photodegradation studies of obtained nanoparticles were evaluated for the degradation of Congo red and Evans blue dyes under visible light irradiation. Pure CoFe2O4 and Zn-doped CoFe2O4 nanoparticles were inspected against both gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) and the gram-negative (Salmonella typhi) bacteria for antibacterial studies. The gram-negative bacterium Salmonella typhi shows high antibacterial activity with the inhibition zone of Zn-doped CoFe2O4 (22 mm) compared to pure CoFe2O4 (16 mm)
Published Version
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