Dye degradation activity of biogenically synthesized Cu/Fe/Ag trimetallic nanoparticles

Abstract

Over the past few decades, nanotechnology has gained momentum because of its potential to create a safer and healthier living environment using eco-friendly approaches. This study describes a safer, more dependable, and ecologically friendly technique of biologically synthesizing Cu/Fe/Ag trimetallic nanoparticles (NPs) using an aqueous leaf extract of Catharanthus roseus as the reducing and stabilizing agent. The synthesized trimetallic NPs were characterized by scanning electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared, dynamic light scattering, and ultraviolet–visible analysis and were evaluated for their potential applications, which included antioxidant properties and catalytic dye degradation. The result suggests that the antioxidant properties of Cu/Fe/Ag NPs are more significant than those of ascorbic acid, a known antioxidant, at lower doses (10 µg·ml−1) while a higher dose of 1,000 µg·ml−1 gives a 69.81% scavenging activity. The impact of Cu/Fe/Ag trimetallic NPs on the catalytic degradation of hazardous dyes such as phenol red (PR) and eosin yellow (EY) was also studied in this work. For PR and EY, the corresponding percentages of degradation were 76% and 48.6%, respectively.

Keywords

• trimetallic nanoparticles
• green synthesis
• antioxidant activity
• catalytic dye degradation