Silver Nanoparticles’ Biogenic Synthesis Using Caralluma subulata Aqueous Extract and Application for Dye Degradation and Antimicrobials Activities

Abstract

The issue of organic contaminants in water resulting from industrial, agricultural, and home activities makes it necessary to effectively address the problems of water scarcity. Using modern technologies that can effectively remove pollutants from wastewater is the way to address this key problem. The use of nanoparticles (NPs) has been advocated due to their unique physical and chemical characteristics and advantageous applications. NPs’ surface stability and synthesis routes are core concerns for environmental remediation and biological applications. In this work, we demonstrated the biogenic synthesis of silver NPs (Ag-CS NPs) by using Caralluma subulata (CS) aqueous extract as a reducing and capping/template agent. The synthesized Ag-CS NPs were characterized by UV-visible absorbance spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, powdered X-ray diffractometer (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Zeta potential. The performance of Ag-CS NPs was evaluated on methylene blue (MB) dye degradation and antibacterial activity tests against bacterial and fungal isolates. The results showed that Ag-CS NPs (0.05%, 20.0 μL) reduced MB by 95.52% within 28 min in the presence of NaBH4 (10.0 mM, 0.980 μL). The degradation of MB followed pseudo zero-order chemical kinetics (R2 = 0.9380), with the reaction rate constant 0.0508 mol L−1 min−1. In addition, Ag-CS NPs were applied as antibacterial agents against 19 bacterial isolates. Ag-CS NPs showed inhibition in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial, as well as fungal isolates. As a greener ecofriendly approach, multifunctional Ag-CS NPs make a promising candidate for the remediation of contaminated water, as well as for important bioapplications.