Improved photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants using green synthesized ZnO and Ni@ZnO NPs for environmental applications

The facile, eco-friendly, and cost-effective production of nanoparticles using green technology has recently piqued the scientific community's interest. In this work, Bioaugmented ZnO and 5 wt%, 10 wt% and 15 wt% of Ni@ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared from soursop leaf extract using facile green technology. The ZnO nanoparticles were found to be crystalline with a single phase, according to XRD examination and Scherer's formula was used to compute the average crystallite size was about 36.3, 38.2, 39.8 and 40.6 for ZnO, 5 wt%, 10 wt% and 15 wt% Ni@ZnO respectively. It was noticed that pure ZnO samples showed 0.0015 values, while nickel content of 5 wt% showed nearly 0.001 values, which specifies that doped samples showed compressive strain. The produced samples’ FESEM pictures demonstrate that the NPs are mostly spherical and less than 100 nm in size. The 510 cm⁻¹ band is caused by asymmetric stretching of the Zn-O tetrahedron, according to FTIR. Ni²⁺ ion inclusion causes a small shift in this peak of 10–20 cm⁻¹. ZnO-NPs made from biosynthesis degraded methylene blue dye 94 % in 50 min. The antimicrobial test confirms that Ni@ZnO (15 %) demonstrated a larger mean zone of inhibition than the other three samples. Biocompatible, ZnO and Ni@ZnO NPs are suited for biomedical and environmental applications because of their eco-friendly synthesis and nontoxic properties.