Nanoparticle−preparation−procedure tune of physical, antibacterial, and photocatalyst properties on silver substituted cobalt ferrite

Abstract

Silver-substituted cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (Ag0·1Co0·9Fe2O4) were successfully synthesized by two simple methods i.e., sol-gel and coprecipitation. The structure, size, morphology, distribution of cations, and magnetic properties were studied by modifying the synthesis temperature to 70 °C, 80 °C, and 90 °C. Subsequently, the photocatalytic and antibacterial properties of Ag0·1Co0·9Fe2O4 were evaluated. All samples, SG70, SG80, SG90, CP70, CP80, and CP90, have a face-centered cubic (fcc) structure with a space group of Fd-3m according to the original crystalline structure of cobalt ferrite CoFe2O4. At 10% doping, a second phase is formed in the form of Ag, Ag3O4, and Fe2O3. In general, the crystallite size is 20–21 nm and correspondence to the grain size of 40–50 nm. For the whole nanoparticles sample, the grain size synthesized by the coprecipitation procedure is smaller than that of the sol-gel method one. The vibrating sample magnetometer result shows that the saturated magnetization increases with the increase of the synthesis temperature for both the sol-gel and the coprecipitation procedure. A superior photocatalytic performance of the samples is obtained as well as antibacterial properties. The best performance for the methylene blue (MB) degradation of around 90% is obtained for the Ag0·1Co0·9Fe2O4 nanoparticles sample with a synthesis temperature of 70 °C by coprecipitation route. The performance antibacterial (on Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli) of the obtained nanoparticle magnetic show that the zone of inhibition increases and is confirmed by the mortality calculation of the total plate count increase within the increase of the synthesis temperature. Here, the surface-specific area as well as saturated magnetization should contribute to the effectivity of antibacterial performance.