Metal oxide nanomaterials are one of the preferences as antibacterial active materials. Due to its distinctive electronic configuration and suitable properties, ZnO is one of the novel antibacterial active materials. Nowadays, researchers are making a serious effort to improve the antibacterial activities of ZnO by forming a composite with the same/different bandgap semiconductor materials and doping of ions. Applying capping agents such as polymers and plant extract that control the morphology and size of the nanomaterials and optimizing different conditions also enhance the antibacterial activity. Forming a nanocomposite and doping reduces the electron/hole recombination, increases the surface area to volume ratio, and also improves the stability towards dissolution and corrosion. The release of antimicrobial ions, electrostatic interaction, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generations are the crucial antibacterial activity mechanism. This review also presents a detailed discussion of the antibacterial activity improvement of ZnO by forming a composite, doping, and optimizing different conditions. The morphological analysis using scanning electron microscopy, field emission-scanning electron microscopy, field-emission transmission electron microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and confocal microscopy can confirm the antibacterial activity and also supports for developing a satisfactory mechanism. Graphical abstract Graphical abstract showing the metal oxides antibacterial mechanism and the fluorescence and scanning electron microscopic images.

Magnetite and silica-coated magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by water-in-oil (W/O) microemulsion method from hydrated ferric nitrate, ferrous sulfate precursors and ammonia a precipitating agent with the assistance of Tween-80 and SDS surfactants. The synthesized materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, thermal analyzer, and infrared spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction pattern of Fe3O4 showed that particles were phase pure with a cubic inverse spinel structure and FT-infrared spectra confirmed the presence of Fe-O bond in tetrahedral and octahedral interstitial sites. The crystallite size determined from powder XRD data with Scherer’s equation was in the range of 7.3 ± 0.05 nm–10.83 ± 0.02 nm for uncoated Fe3O4 and 16 ± 0.14 nm for silica-coated Fe3O4 NPs. The SEM micrographs of the uncoated Fe3O4 oxide revealed the agglomeration of the magnetite (Fe3O4) particles. But the silica-coated Fe3O4 oxide exhibited homogeneous distribution of particles with relatively less agglomerate of the particles. The particle size of Fe3O4 NPs slightly increased with the temperature and precursor concentration. The antimicrobial activities of Fe3O4 and silica-coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles were tested against Gram-negative (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis) bacteria. Both Fe3O4 and silica-coated Fe3O4 NPs demonstrated better antimicrobial activities.

Even though the photocatalytic processes are a good technology for treatment of toxic organic pollutants, the majority of current photocatalysts cannot utilize sunlight sufficiently to realize the decomposition of these organic pollutants. As stated by various researchers, metal oxide nanoparticles have a significant photocatalytic performance under visible light source. Among various chemical and physical methods used to synthesize nanostructured silver oxide, green synthetic route is a cheaper and environmental friendly method. To confirm the optimum production of Ag2O NPs, effect of pH, extract concentration, metal ion concentration, and contact time were optimized. The structure, morphology, crystallinity, size, purity, elemental composition, and optical properties of obtained Ag2O NPs were characterized by different techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscope (HRTEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and UV-visible spectrophotometer accordingly as revealed by our literature review. The photocatalytic performance of the synthesized nanocrystalline Ag2O by photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes under visible light irradiation has been discussed thoroughly in this review. Many past studies revealed that organic dyes and pollutants are decomposed completely by green synthesized Ag2O NPs under irradiation of visible light.

Adsorption and photo catalysis are the most popular methods applied for the reduction of amount of pollutants that enter water bodies. The main challenge in the process of adsorption is the demonstration of the experimental data obtained from sorption processes. For many decades most of the researchers used adsorption and kinetic of adsorption as a repetitive work to describe the adsorption data by using common models such as, Langmuir and Freundlich for adsorption isotherms; PFO and PSO models for kinetics. This has been done without careful evaluation of the characteristics of adsorption process. It has been well understood that adsorption does not degrade the pollutant to eco-friendly products and photo catalysis will not degrade without adsorption of the pollutant on the catalyst. Therefore, understanding the detailed mechanism of adsorption, as well as, photo catalysis has been presented in this paper. During photo catalysis: modification towards suppression of electron-hole recombination, improving visible light response, preventing agglomeration, controlling the shape, size, morphology, etc. are the most important steps. This mini review also widely discusses the key points behind adsorption and photo catalysis.

No abstract