Plant extract-strategy using Teucrium Polium stems to green synthesize Ag/AgCl bionanocomposite imprinted on Fe3O4/kaolinite and potentials in catalytic and chemosensor applications

Abstract

A two-component bionanocomposite was produced with an easy and green method and was expanded to the three and four-component nanostructures. In fact, the Ag/AgCl sample with the mean diameter of about 22 nm was biosynthesized using the aqueous extract of Teucrium Polium and then it was imprinted on kaolinite to produce the Ag/AgCl/kaolinite bionanocomposite with a particle size range of 5–35 nm. For the first time, the four-component Ag/AgCl/Fe3O4/kaolinite bionanocomposite, composed of the 19 nm nanorods of Fe3O4 in the vicinity of the 29 nm Ag/AgCl nanospheres was synthesized with the same method to promote the properties and applications. All the products could be utilized in the aqueous media, as both the useful biosensors to detect of Hg2+ with a minimum concentration of 100 μM and the efficient catalysts for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol in 10–50 min. It’s remarkable that the as-prepared composites were characterized using the various techniques such as UV-Vis, FT-IR, XRD, FE-SEM, and EDX. Further, the vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) measurement revealed the ferromagnetic nature of Ag/AgCl/Fe3O4/kaolinite. Therefore, the four-component nanocomposite has the ability to separate easily with the aid of an external magnet, in addition to its other valuable advantages like easy work-up, and high catalytic efficiency and sensor performance.