Biogenic Synthesis of Chromolanae Odorata-mediated Copper Oxide Nanoparticles for Use as Antifungal and Photocatalytic Agent

Plant-mediated nanoparticle (NPs) synthesis has been recently explored because of its numerous merits over chemical or physical methods. The present effort was to biogenically synthesize and characterize CuO NPs using aqueous extracts of chromolanae odorata for possible use as photocatalyst or an antimicrobial agent. The aqueous plant extracts as well as the CuO green NPs were characterized for their optical, structural, surface morphological, elemental and average particle sizes using Uv-visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), x-ray diffraction spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope coupled with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscope (SEM-EDX) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) respectively. Results showed that both extracts and the green NPs absorbed in the Uv-regions at 300 nm and 250 nm respectively. FTIR indicated the presence of important functional groups such as C≡C, amines, and alcohols which are important in photocatalysis and or adsorption studies with Cu – O bond length at 801 cm-1. XRD showed a crystalline phase of face-centred-cubic structure of monoclinic CuO NPs, with an average crystallite size of 12.49±0.1 nm while SEM-EDX indicated large irregular shapes with large pore sized, having combination ratio, Cu:O of 1:2. In addition, DLS results showed a hydrodynamic particle size of 72.45 nm and polydispersity index (PDI) of 0.44; which were in variance with the crystallite size obtained from XRD and indicated possible agglomeration of the NPs. The important active sites, nano-particulate/crystallite size and hydrophobicity are indications that the NPs will be suitable as both a multi-spectrum antimicrobial and photocatalytic agent.