Exploration on the Structural, Optical, Morphological and Magnetic Properties of Hematite Nanoparticles and Their Antibacterial Activity

Hematite (α-Fe2O3) nanoparticles have been prepared by the conventional chemical precipitation synthesis technique. The prepared samples were subjected to structural, morphological, optical, magnetic and antibacterial behaviours. The diffraction analysis implies that the measured crystallite size of α- Fe2O3 nanoparticles is found to be 39 nm. The UV-visible absorption spectroscopy exhibits a strong absorption around 560 nm which is characteristics of Fe2O3 nanoparticles and the calculated bandgap value is found to be 2.07 eV. The presence of iron oxide polymorphs can be demonstrated by displaying phonon modes in Raman spectroscopy. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) study is used to identify the existence of functional groups and chemical structure of the synthesised Fe2O3 nanoparticles. Magnetic analysis displays hysteretic behaviour at room temperature with saturation magnetization Ms = 0.0036 emu/gm, the remanent magnetization Mr = 0.000698 emu/gm, and coercivity Hc = –0.27 Oe, respectively. The antibacterial activities of these α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles were investigated on pathogenic bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, and E. coli by a zone of inhibition method.