Antimicrobial & Free Radical Scavenging Activities of Green Synthesised Copper Nanoparticles from <i>Musa acuminata</i> and <i>Citrus sinensis</i> Peel Extracts

Abstract

The biosynthesis of nanoparticles is a kind of bottom-up approach where the main reaction occurring is reduction/oxidation. Re-cently, green synthesis of nanoparticles using plant extracts has gained more attention, since they are simple, cost-effective, non-toxic, environment friendly and easily scaled up for large-scale synthesis. There is a great demand for synthesizing Copper nano-particles (CuNPs) by simple and less expensive methods. The peels of a variety of fruits have gained attention as a natural source of antioxidants. Green synthesis of CuNPs was successfully obtained from bio-reduction of copper sulfate pentahydrate solutions using <i>Musa acuminata</i> and <i>Citrus sinensis</i>. CuNPs have been appropriately characterized using UV-vis spectroscopy and SEM analysis. It was observed that CuNPs synthesized from dried orange peel extract had better anti-microbial and antioxidant activi-ty than the fresh orange peel and showed great activity than all the other three samples. Since copper is well-known for its anti-microbial properties, we assumed that fabricating CuNP from banana and orange peel extract can increase its efficiency. The antimicrobial activity of the nanoparticles was analyzed using gram-positive (<i>Staphylococcus aureus</i>), gram-negative (<i>Escherichia coli</i>), and fungal (<i>Aspergillus niger</i>) species. Due to their benign and stable nature and antimicrobial property, these CuNPs may be well utilized for industrial and medicinal purposes.