Environmentally benign preparation of copper oxide nanoparticles and its potential biological and photocatalytic activities

Abstract

Abstract The study reports environment friendly facile preparation of multi-functional CuO nanoparticles using Kiwi fruit juice and assesses its photocatalytic and a variety of biological activities. The PXRD pattern demonstrates that the nanoparticles are members of the pure monoclinic structure with particles having sizes from 8 to 10 nm. They were found to exhibit a porous and sponge-like morphology with almost spherical shape, as seen by TEM and SEM pictures. The peak centered at 608 cm− 1 was caused by stretching of Cu-O in FTIR spectrum. The nanoparticles found to possess high photocatalytic degradation activity towards model dye such as methylene blue. The nanoparticles exhibit various potential biological activities. It efficiently suppresses the 1,1-Dipheny-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical activity. It has antibacterial efficacy against pathogenic bacterial strains such as Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus. CuO-Nanoparticles were investigated for anti-diabetic activity, and they demonstrated excellent α-glucosidase (IC50 of 183 µg/ml) and α-amylase (IC50 of 124 µg/ml) inhibition effects. The MTT test was used to examine the cytotoxicity of CuO Nps on the HeLa cell line, which showed dose-dependent activity with IC50 value of 303 µg/ml, which indicate that they were significantly cytotoxic. Copper oxide nanoparticles improved platelet aggregation and plasma coagulation without exhibiting hemolytic activity. This study demonstrates a quick, simple, low-cost, facile, environmentally benign green synthetic approach for large-scale synthesis of multifunctional CuO nanoparticles.