Antibacterial, antifungal and photocatalytic evaluation of Gd₂O₃-Fe₂O₃-CoO heterostructured photocatalyst

ABSTRACT

In the present work, the tri-phase of Gd₂O₃-Fe₂O₃-CoO heterostructured ternary nanocomposite was synthesised via a facile co-precipitation method to investigate the antimicrobial and photocatalytic potential. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and BET (Brunauer-Emmitt-Teller) analysis were used to examine the functional group detection, phase purity, surface morphology elemental detection and surface area of synthesised nanocomposite. The antibacterial study against Staphylococus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, and Bacillus subtilis bacterial strains was evaluated. The results showed higher activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa with ZOI 26 mm. The antifungal test against Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger was evaluated. The results showed higher activity against Aspergillus flavus with less growth of fungi around the composite. Methylene blue (MB) dye and Ciprofloxacin (CIP) drug were used as target pollutants to evaluate the photocatalytic performance of catalyst under solar light irradiation. The ternary composite exhibited 93% and 96% degradation efficiency towards MB and CIP at pH = 11, and pH = 7, respectively in 120 min which is higher than pure Gd₂O₃, Fe₂O₃ and CoO. Furthermore, active species trapping tests with various scavengers elucidate a possible mechanism, indicating that •O₂^_and •OH radicals play a critical part in photodegradation reaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Heterostructured nanocomposite
• antimicrobial activity
• photocatalytic performance
• methylene blue
• ciprofloxacin
• degradation efficiency

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to BahauddinZakariya University Multan, Pakistan for financial support during the research work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data will be provided on request.

Author contributions

Sadia Ghazanfar: Methodology, Investigation,Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Writing & Review. Hafiz Muhammad Asif: Data Curation, Conceptualization. Muhammad Sirajuddin: Review & Editing, Muhammad Tariq: Conceptualization, Supervision. Kausar Hussain Shah: Investigation, Resources. Shabbir Hussain: Critical analysis, Validation, Editing & Proof reading.