A Comprehensive Review on Metal Oxide-based Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Characterization, Environmental, and Therapeutic Applications

Metal oxide-based nanomaterials have gained attention due to their unique properties and wide applications in numerous fields including environmental remediation and intervention therapy. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the synthetic methods, characterization strategies, and therapeutic and environmental applications of metal oxide-based NPs. Diverse synthetic routes have their advantages in controlling the nanostructure size, shape, and morphology of nanostructures and thus, tailoring their properties to specific applications techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) provide information about crystallite size, morphology, surface chemistry, and optical properties. These NPs have the potential for the identification and elimination of hazardous gases, heavy metals like arsenic, iron, and manganese, and so on. along with organic pollutants and biological contaminants such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The medicinal utility of metal-oxide-based NPs has also been disseminated, particularly their role as antibacterial, antifungal, and anticancer agents. The properties may be attributed to high surface area (surface-to-volume ratio) and high reactivity. They also find applications in clinical medicine especially in drug delivery and biomedical imaging. Their biocompatibility, controlled drug release kinetics and ability to target cells or tissues make them more effective than conventional drugs.