Microwave-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of ZnO@ZrO2 nanohybrid for biomedical and photocatalytic applications

Abstract

The present study was conducted to synthesize zinc oxide decorated on zirconium oxide (ZnO@ZrO2) nanohybrid synthesized through microwave-hydrothermal (MW-HT) method. Various analytical techniques were used to analyze the morphology, surface properties, constitution of hybrid, and elemental composition. Additionally, the anti-microbial activity of ZnO@ZrO2 nanohybrid was assessed against Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria, hemolytic, anti-oxidant as well as anti-inflammatory assay. The hexagonal wurtzite phase of the ZnO was revealed by the XRD analysis. The experimental results reveal that the synergetic effect between the Zn and Zr active sites results an excellent biomedical activity. The ZnO@ZrO2 nanohybrid was successfully applied to the photocatalytic degradation of basic fuchsin (BF) dye within short period of time under visible light (VL) radiation. Moreover, the ZnO@ZrO2 nanohybrid exhibited an extraordinary performance for photocatalytic degradation of BF with a pseudo-first order rate constant (k) of ca. 0.1702 min−1, which was 2.5 and 1.8 fold compared to ZnO and ZrO2 photocatalysts. These results indicated that the ZnO@ZrO2 nanohybrid can be used as a potential biomaterial for bioengineering and photocatalytic applications.