Facile one pot microwave-assisted green synthesis of FeO/Ag nanocomposites by phytoreduction: Potential application as sunlight-driven photocatalyst, antibacterial and anticancer agent.

Herein, we report a one-pot microwave assisted method to prepare an efficient FeO/Ag nanocomposites (NCs) using Aloe vera (A. vera) gel extract as a mild, safe, renewable and active stabilizer without any harmful reagent. The advanced characterization techniques including XRD, FT-IR, UV-DRS, PL, TGA, SEM-EDX, TEM, DLS, Elemental mapping, VSM and BET were applied to analyze the morphology and structure of the prepared FeO/Ag NCs. The results exhibited that the FeO/Ag NCs was successfully synthesized by greener route. Furthermore, these bio-reduced FeO/Ag NCs was tested for its catalytic degradation toward methylene blue (MB) as a model contaminant and exhibited outstanding photocatalytic degradation efficiency with 88.2% removal rate in 140 min. It was worth pointing out that the FeO/Ag nanoparticles facilitated the charge transportation and inhibit the charge recombination of an electron in the conduction band. Additionally, the prepared FeO/Ag NCs was studied for their in-vitro antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria and anticancer properties against A549 cell lines (human lung cancer). The biological results of this study demonstrated that A. vera gel extract derived FeO/Ag NCs showed significant inhibition properties against bacterial strains and also capable of achieving superior action against A549 cancer cell lines.