Antibacterial and photocatalytic activity of ZnO, SnO₂ and Zn₂SnO₄ nanoparticles prepared by Microwave assisted method

ABSTRACT

A simple   microwave   assisted method   was   employed to   synthesiseZnO, SnO₂ and Zn₂SnO₄ nanoparticles (NPs). XRD studies revealed the crystalline formation of ZnO with wurtzite, SnO₂ with rutile and Zn₂SnO₄ with cubic respectively. FESEM showed that the ZnO, SnO₂ and Zn₂SnO₄ NP’s morphology constituted of spindle, spherical and polygonal grains respectively. EDAX, FT-IR, Raman and PL studies have established the composition, the functional groups, phonon modes and the emission behaviour of NP’s respectively. The higher antibacterial activity of Zn₂SnO₄ NPs than the ZnO and SnO₂ is attributed to the effect of composite ions that create oxygen defects to damage the microbe synthesis activity leading to the cell losing their ability of cell division, which may lead to the cell death of the bacteria. Further, Zn₂SnO₄ NPs exhibit appreciable photocatalytic activity and the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue was increased up to 90.9 % with respective time duration of 120 minutes.

KEYWORDS:

• ZnO
• SnO₂
• Zn₂SnO₄
• magnetic
• antibacterial properties
• photocatalytic

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

No funding has been used.