Synthesis and characterization of magnetic nanoparticles decorated by carbon layers acting as defenders against bacterial infectious agents

Abstract

High stability magnetic nanocomposites wrapped by carbon layers were efficiently synthesized using electrical arc powered by single arc unit. This is sufficient to ionize the nickel, and carbon electrodes immersed in distilled water through applying strong electric field between carbon rotatory cathode and nickel anode. Nickle decorated by carbon (Ni@C) nanocomposite was fully characterized by transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM), UV/Visible Spectrophotometer (UV), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Particle size analyzer (PZ), Zeta potential, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Ni particle was spherical with average size equals to 17 nm wrapped by carbon where its energy band gap values were 2.84 for C, and 3.36 eV for Ni. The estimated phase percentage of nickel was 64.8 % which is higher than the percentage of carbon layers that's donating the sample the observed high stability of zeta potential was found to be 26.4 mV. The saturation magnetization (Ms) and coercivity (Hc) examined were 10.624 emu/g and 80.648 G, respectively. The antibacterial effect of the synthesized nanocomposites was tested against standard ATCC (American Type Colony Collection) strains namely Pseudomonas aeruginosa 27853, Proteus mirabilis 35659, Proteus vurgalis 13315, Klebsiella pneumoniae 13883, and Staphylococcus epidermidis 12228. Proteus vurgalis 13315 was the most resistant strain which wasn't completely eradicated after 24 h incubation with the prepared nanoparticles. Further assessments through confocal microscope and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation percentage were done to predict the possible antibacterial mechanism of the synthesized nanocomposite. Ultimately, the combined influence of nickel ions and carbon in the prepared Ni@C nanocomposite results in the suppression of bacterial respiration and the induction of oxidative stress, ultimately leading to bacterial cell death.