Hydrothermal synthesis of spindle structure copper ferrite-graphene oxide nanocomposites for enhanced photocatalytic dye degradation and in-vitro antibacterial activity

Abstract

In this study, a one-step hydrothermal approach was used to make pure magnetic copper ferrite (CuFe₂O₄) and copper ferrite-graphene oxide (CuFe₂O₄-rGO) nanocomposites (NCs) and spinel structure CuFe₂O₄ with a single phase of tetragonal CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs was confirmed by the XRD. Then, characterization of CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs was done using ng Raman spectroscopy, FT-IR, TGA-DTA, EDS, SEM, and TEM. The synthesized NCs was exposed to UV light to evaluate its photocatalytic activity for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RhB) with CuFe₂O₄ and CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs, respectively. The catalyst CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs provided higher degradation of MB (94%) than for RhB (86%) under UV light irradiation compared to CuFe₂O₄. Further, the antibacterial activities of CuFe₂O₄-NPs and CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs were tested against Gram-negative and -positive bacterial pathogens such as Vibrio cholera (V. cholera); Escherichia coli (E. coli); Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa); Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis); Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus); and Staphylococcus epidermidis (S. epidermidis) by well diffusion method. At 100 μg/mL concentrations of CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs, maximal growth inhibition was shown against E. coli (18 mm) and minimum growth inhibition against S. epidermidis (12 mm). This study suggests that CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs as a high-efficacy antibacterial material and plays an important role in exhibiting higher sensitivity depending on concentrations. The results encourage that the synthesized CuFe₂O₄-rGO-NCs can be used as a promising material for the antibacterial activity and also for dye degradation in the water/wastewater treatment plants.

Keywords: Antibacterial efficacy; Hydrothermal synthesis; Nanocomposite; Organic dye pollutant; Photocatalytic process; Waterborne epidemics.