Content area
Full Text
J Nanopart Res (2012) 14:773 DOI 10.1007/s11051-012-0773-0
RESEARCH PAPER
Biomimetic growth of gallic acidZnO hybrid assemblies and their applications
Nazmul H. Sarker Stacey N. Barnaby
Karl R. Fath Stephen H. Frayne
Nako Nakatsuka Ipsita A. Banerjee
Received: 3 August 2011 / Accepted: 9 February 2012 / Published online: 9 March 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract In this study, we probed the biomimetic formation of gallic acid (GA)ZnO nanoparticle hybrids. It was found that the morphologies formed were dependent upon pH values, resulting in GAZnO hybrids of varying shapes such as micro or nanoplates or bers. The formed supramolecular GAZnO hybrids were found to be luminescent as indicated by confocal microscopy and were utilized for the photocatalytic degradation of the organic dye methylene blue. We also explored the bactericidal effects of the hybrids on Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) as well as Escherichia Coli (E. Coli). Thus, we have developed a new class of shape-controlled nanohybrid assemblies via mild, green synthetic methods that may be utilized for photocatalytic degradation for environmental remediation as well as for antibacterial applications.
Keywords Biomimetic Zinc oxide nanoparticles
Gallic acid Assemblies Complexes
Introduction
Semiconductor nanoparticles have been known to have a wide-range of applications for device fabrications, such as sensors, LEDs, transistors, solar cells, and bioimaging (Alivisatos 1996; Masumoto and Takagahara 2002). For example, highly monodisperse and monocyrstalline nanoparticles of CdSe and CdS have been extensively synthesized in a wide range of sizes (Mahamuni et al. 1999) and shapes (Ma et al. 2004; Ge and Li 2004) for applications in bioimaging (Ma et al. 2007; Murciaa et al. 2008) photocatalytic studies (Bao et al. 2008; Warrier et al. 2004), and solar cells (Frese 1982; Britt and Ferekides 1993). Nano-crystals of ZnS have been known to display high quantum efciency (Bhargava and Gallagher 1994). Colloidal quantum dots such as SnS2 (Tan et al. 2011)
and PbS (Watt et al. 2005) have also been used in the fabrication of organic/inorganic hybrid bulk-hetero-junction solar cells. Other studies have reported on the use of combining quantam dots such as InP (Zaban et al. 1998) and InAs (Yu et al. 2006) with the semiconductor oxide, TiO2, to obtain quantum-dotsensitized solar cells (QDSSC).
Among the many oxide semiconductors, ZnO nanoparticles have gained much attention because of...