Investigation of photocatalytic and DNA interaction of novel heterostructured GO/Bi2O3/ZnO nanocomposite

Abstract

In the present work, we synthesize novel heterostructured nanocomposites of GO/Bi2O3/ZnO (GBZ), GO/Bi2O3 and GO/ZnO adopting by solid state method and using nano graphene oxide (GO), Bismuth oxide (Bi2O3) and Zinc oxide (ZnO). The desire synthesized nanocomposites were characterized and established by UV–visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) and Furrier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. The average grain, particle and crystallite sizes of GBZ were found to be 100 ± 5, 50 ± 2 and 48 ± 2 nm, respectively. The most exciting feature of the compositions is that the nanoparticles were distinctly shaped with effective photocatalytic activity against crystal violet (CV) degradation in the presence of sunlight under normal conditions. Among all the composites, GBZ has more catalytic degradation efficiency (85 %) than other catalysts, including different dyes and its rate constant (k) is 17.8 × 10−3min−1 against CV. This study also includes the common ion effect of the catalysts. The GBZ was easily recoverable by a simple filtration method and recycled without significant loss of photocatalytic activity. In the present work we first time report the DNA interactions with GBZ and show good binding results with a distinctly red shift from 258.34 to 269.32 nm. The advantages of these nanocomposites were synthetic process, high yield, solvent-free condition, reusable, cost-effective, nontoxic, short-time reaction and less hazardous materials under a green context.

Keywords

• GBZ
• Nanocomposites
• Heterostructured
• Photocatalyst
• Crystal violet
• DNA Interaction