Microbial Fabrication of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles and Evaluation of Their Antimicrobial and Photocatalytic Properties

Devendra Jain; Shivani; Ali Asger Bhojiya; Himmat Singh; Hemant Kumar Daima; Mandeep Singh; Santosh Ranjan Mohanty; Bjorn John Stephen; Abhijeet Singh

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00778

Microbial Fabrication of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles and Evaluation of Their Antimicrobial and Photocatalytic Properties

Front Chem. 2020 Sep 30:8:778. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2020.00778. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Devendra Jain¹, Shivani¹, Ali Asger Bhojiya^{1

2}, Himmat Singh³, Hemant Kumar Daima⁴, Mandeep Singh⁵, Santosh Ranjan Mohanty⁶, Bjorn John Stephen⁷, Abhijeet Singh⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur, India.
² Department of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences, Mewar University, Chittorgarh, India.
³ Material Research Centre, Malviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India.
⁴ Amity Center for Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine (ACNN), Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University Rajasthan, Rajasthan, India.
⁵ All India Network Project on Soil Biodiversity-Biofertilizers, ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, India.
⁶ School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
⁷ Department of Biosciences, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India.

Abstract

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles have attracted significant interest in a number of applications ranging from electronics to biomedical sciences due to their large exaction binding energy (60 meV) and wide bandgap of 3.37 eV. In the present study, we report the low-cost bacterium based "eco-friendly" efficient synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles by using the zinc-tolerant bacteria Serratia nematodiphila. The physicochemical characterization of ZnO nanoparticles was performed by employing UV-vis spectroscopy, XRD, TEM, DLS, Zeta potential, and Raman spectroscopy. The antimicrobial and antifungal studies were investigated at different concentrations using the agar well-diffusion method, whereby the microbial growth rate decreases with the increase in nanoparticle concentration. Further, photocatalytic performance studies were conducted by taking methyl orange (MO) as a reference dye.

Keywords: antimicrobial; photocatalytic dye degradation; physiochemical; zinc oxide nanoparticles; zinc tolerant bacteria.