Biocidal Properties of Zinc Oxide-Titanium Dioxide-Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites via One-Pot Facile Precipitation Method

Novel multifunctional inorganic nanocomposites have enhanced the biocidal activity, towards bacterial and cancer diseases, which was useful for biomedical applications in healthcare industries. The critical parameter in preparation of multifunctional biocidal nanocomposites consists of several advantages such as low cost, smaller size, excellent yield, tunable properties, biocompatibility, multifunctionality, controllability, and reducing the toxicity levels of materials. The multifunctional biocidal zinc oxide (ZnO)-titanium dioxide (TiO2)-graphene oxide (GO)—ZTGO—nanocomposite sample was employed via facile one-pot precipitation process. The XRD analysis revealed that ZTGO nanocomposites exhibit hexagonal structure phase formation. From the morphological analysis, the prepared ZTGO nanocomposites exhibited GO sheets were decorated with ZnO-TiO2 nanoflakes structure with uniform distribution. EDX spectrum displays the presence of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), zinc (Zn), titanium (Ti), and oxygen (O) for ZTGO nanocomposites, respectively. The FTIR results confirmed that ZTGO samples have some oxygen-containing functional groups and defect sites, and, as a result, revealed a strong interaction between GO, TiO2, and ZnO nanomaterials. The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of ZTGO nanocomposites exhibited oxygen vacancies found to be 500 and 527 nm, respectively, and thus results can be responsible for the production of active radicals against the biocidal activities. The antibacterial potential of the ZTGO nanocomposites achieved against S. aureus and E. coli, results were showed that the ZTGO more antibacterial activity as compared to the standard antibiotic amoxicillin. The morphological changes of ZTGO nanocomposites treated E. coli bacterial cell membrane observed by SEM analysis. The anticancer activity of the ZTGO nanocomposites was studied in liver cancer cells (A549) and IC50 value was observed at 52.72 μg/mL. From this work, we believed that prepared ZTGO nanocomposites are a potentially important material for healthcare applications.