Novel Gomutra (cow urine) mediated synthesis of silver oxide nanoparticles and their enhanced photocatalytic, photoluminescence and antibacterial studies

Abstract

This work successfully synthesizes silver oxide (Ag2O) nanoparticles (Nps) using cow urine. The presence of different biological components in cow's urine may act as fuel for the synthesis of Ag2O Nps by a combustion method at 500 °C. This is a rapid and environmentally benign procedure, which has the added advantage of shorter response times and better control over size and shape. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by means of XRD, FTIR, UV-vis, SEM, EDAX and TEM and have been tested for photoluminescence and for photocatalytic and biological activities. They show good photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue, due to their sensitivity to absorb light with a wide band gap energy. Furthermore, we have examined the photoluminescence properties of the synthesized material and found that it has a yellow emission for excitation at 436 nm. In addition, the synthesized material exhibits a good antibacterial activity for both gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial strains by the disc diffusion method. It is shown that these combustion methods produce nano sized Ag2O within less time suited for a large scale synthesis in an economic way. Keywords: Silver oxide nanoparticles, Gomutra, Combustion method, Photocatalytic, Photoluminescence, Antibacterial