Photo-mediated optimized synthesis of silver nanoparticles for the selective detection of Iron(III), antibacterial and antioxidant activity

The AgNPs synthesized by green method have shown great potential in several applications such as biosensing, biomedical, catalysis, electronic etc. The present study deals with the selective colorimetric detection of Fe3+ using photoinduced green synthesized AgNPs. For the synthesis purpose, an aqueous extract of Croton bonplandianum (AEC) was used as a reducing and stabilizing agent. The biosynthesis was confirmed by UV-visible spectroscopy where an SPR band at lambda(max) 436 nm after 40 s and 428 nm after 30 min corresponded to the existence of AgNPs. The optimum conditions for biosynthesis of AgNPs were 30 min sunlight exposure time, 5.0% (v/v) AEC inoculum dose and 4 mM AgNO3 concentration. The stability of synthesized AgNPs was monitored up to 9 months. The size and shape of AgNPs with average size 19.4 nm were determined by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM) and High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HR-TEM). The crystallinity was determined by High-Resolution X-ray Diffractometer (HR-XRD) and Selected Area Electron Diffraction (SAED) pattern. The chemical and elemental compositions were determined by Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (FFIR) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) respectively. The Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) imagqs represented the lateral and 3D topological characteristics of AgNPs. The XPS analysis confirmed the presence of two individual peaks which attributed to the Ag 3d3/2 and Ag 3d5/2 binding energies corresponding to the presence of metallic silver. The biosynthesized AgNPs showed potent antibacterial activity against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial strains as well as antioxidant activity. On the basis of results and facts, a probable mechanism was also proposed to explore the possible route of AgNPs synthesis, colorimetric detection of Fe3+, antibacterial and antioxidant activity. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.