SnO2nanorods/graphene nanoplatelets nanocomposites: towards fast removal of malachite green and pathogen control

Aqsa Arshad; Tahira Qamar Nisar; Muhammad Zulqurnain; Robina Khan Niazi; Qaisar Mansoor

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/abfdef

SnO₂nanorods/graphene nanoplatelets nanocomposites: towards fast removal of malachite green and pathogen control

Nanotechnology. 2021 Dec 22;33(11). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/abfdef.

Authors

Aqsa Arshad^{1

2}, Tahira Qamar Nisar¹, Muhammad Zulqurnain³, Robina Khan Niazi⁴, Qaisar Mansoor⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
² Cambridge Graphene Centre, The University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue Cambridge CB3 0FA, United Kingdom.
³ Department of Physics, The University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue Cambridge CB3 0FA, United Kingdom.
⁴ Department of Biological Sciences, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
⁵ Institute of Biomedical and Genetic Engineering, Islamabad, Pakistan.

PMID: 33946055
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/abfdef

Abstract

The world is facing alarming challenges of environmental pollution due to uncontrolled water contamination and multiple drug resistance of pathogens. However, these challenges can be addressed by using novel nanocomposites materials such as, SnO₂/graphene nanopaletelets (GNPs) nanocomposites remarkably. In this work, we have prepared SnO₂nanorods and SnO₂/GNPs nanocomposites (GS-I and GS-II) with size of 25 ± 6 nm in length and 4 ± 2 nm in diameter. The optical bandgap energies change from 3.14 eV to 2.80 eV in SnO₂and SnO₂/GNPs nanocomposite. We found that SnO₂/GNPs nanocomposite (GS-II) completely removes (99.11%) malachite green in 12 min, under UV light exposure, while under same conditions, SnO₂nanorods removes only 37% dye. Moreover, visible light exposure resulted in 99.01% removal of malachite green in 15 min by GSII as compared to 24.7% removal by SnO₂. In addition, GS-II nanocomposite inhibits 79.57% and 78.51% growth ofP. aeruginosaandS. aureusrespectively. A synchronized contribution of SnO₂and GNPs makes SnO₂/GNPs nanocomposites (GS-II) an innovative multifunctional material for simultaneous fast and complete removal of malachite green and inhibition of drug resistant pathogens.

Keywords: SnO2 nanorods; graphene nanoplatelets; malachite green; nanoantibiotics; photocatalytic removal.