We report in this paper antibacterial activity of Ag-doped TiO2 and Ag-doped ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) under visible light irradiation synthesized by using a sol-gel method. Structural, morphological, and basic optical properties of these samples were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectrum, and UV-Vis reflectance. Room temperature X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that Ag-doped TiO2 has both rutile and anatase phases, but TiO2 NPs only have the anatase phase. In both ZnO and Ag-doped ZnO NPs, the hexagonal wurtzite structure was observed. The morphologies of TiO2 and ZnO were influenced by doping with Ag, as shown from the SEM images. EDX confirms that the samples are composed of Zn, Ti, Ag, and O elements. UV-Vis reflectance results show decreased band gap energy of Ag-doped TiO2 and Ag-doped ZnO NPs in comparison to that of TiO2 and ZnO. Pathogenic bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli, were used to assess the antibacterial activity of the synthesized materials. The reduction in the viability of all the three bacteria to zero using Ag-doped ZnO occurred at 60 μg/mL of culture, while Ag-doped TiO2 showed zero viability at 80 μg/mL. Doping of Ag on ZnO and TiO2 plays a vital role in the increased antibacterial activity performance.

Nickel(II) reacts with 2-acetylpyridine-4-methyl-3-thiosemicarbazone (APMT) and forms a yellow colored complex, which was extracted into n-hexanol from sodium acetate and acetic acid buffer at pH 6.0. The absorbance value of the Ni(II)-APMT complex was measured at different intervals of time at 375 nm to ascertain the time stability of the complex. The extraction of the complex into the solvent was instantaneous and stable for more than 72 hrs. The system obeyed Beer’s law in the concentration range of 0.235 - 2.43 µg·ml^–1 of nickel(II), with an excellent linearity and a correlation coefficient of 0.999. The molar absorptivity and Sandell’s sensitivity of the extracted species were found to be 2.16 × 104 L mol^–1 ·cm^–1 and 0.003 µg·cm^–2 at 375 nm, respectively. Hence a detailed study of the extraction of nickel(II) with APMT has been undertaken with a view to developing a rapid and sensitive extractive spectrophotometric method for the determination of nickel(II) when present alone or in the presence of diverse ions which are usually associated with nickel(II) in environmental matrices like soil and industrial effluents. Various standard alloy samples (CM 247 LC, IN 718, BCS 233, 266, 253 and 251) have been tested for the determination of nickel for the purpose of validation of the present method. The results of the proposed method are comparable with those from atomic absorption spectrometry and were found to be in good agreement