Tinospora cordifolia-assisted synthesis of silver ferrite nanoparticles: a multifunctional approach to photocatalytic degradation of reactive blue-13 dye, anti-bacterial efficacy, and antioxidant properties

ABSTRACT

Tinospora cordifolia plant extract was used for the green synthesis of AgFeO₂ NPs, which were then characterised using FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), UV-vis spectroscopy, VSM (vibrating sample magnetometry), zeta potential, BET (Brunauer-Emmett-Teller), and XRD (X-ray diffraction) analysis. The notable XRD peaks observed at 550–600 cm⁻¹ in the hybrid NPs can be attributed to the presence of iron oxide skeleton (-O-Fe), indicating the presence of AgFeO₂ nanocrystals. Additionally, two peaks at approximately 526 and 486 cm⁻¹ indicate the stretching vibrations of the Ag-O and Fe-O bonds within the AgFeO₂ NPs, respectively. SEM analysis showed spherical nanoparticles forming irregular clusters with an average size of 19.43 nm. Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) analysis demonstrated that the AgFeO₂ NPs exhibited superparamagnetic behaviour. This is characterised by an effective magnetisation of 61.57 emu/g, with low saturation magnetisation, magnetic remanence and non-zero coercivity making them suitable for magnetic applications. The zeta potential of −23.16 mV suggested NP stability due to electrostatic repulsion. UV-vis spectroscopy verified the existence of AgFeO₂ NPs with an absorbance peak at 246 nm. BET analysis indicated that nanoparticles exhibited a large surface area of 3.4027 m² g⁻¹ and a nanoporous structure with an average pore size diameter of 3.1436 Å. 96% degradation of RB-13 dye was observed at pH 2 within contact time of 60 min, 50 mg concentration of catalyst and 10 ppm dye solution. The values of R² = 0.96 and 0.94 confirm the validity of Pseudo’s first order and Langmuir-Hinshelwood’s kinetic models, respectively, for dye degradation. Anti-bacterial activity indicated that with increasing concentration of AgFeO₂ NPs, the antibacterial activity becomes less because the time needed to detect bacteria was increased due to less active site availability for AgFeO₂ NPs. The ascorbic acid consistently exhibits higher antioxidant activity at 82.25, 84.67, and 88.66% than Tinospora cordifolia leaf extract 51.34, 60.91, 74.02, and AgFeO₂ NPs 61.54, 70.81, and 80.22 at 50, 75 and 100 μg/mL concentrations, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-oxidant
• anti-bacterial
• degradation
• environmental pollution
• photocatalyst
• RB-13 dye

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Sana Javaid: Writing – original draft, Investigation; Muhammad Shahid Khan: Formal analysis, Data Curation, Resources, Supervision; Muhammad Babar Taj: Project administration, Supervision, Visualization; Writing – review & editing; Hina Afzal and Iqra Batool: Methodology; Afaf Almasoudi: Formal analysis; Mishayyam Ghaznavi: Data curation; Tariq Javed: Formal analysis; Sharif Qureshi: Data curation; Waqar Azeem: Resources.

Data availability statement

All data are present within the manuscript body.