Synthesis of Al/starch co-doped in CaO nanoparticles for enhanced catalytic and antimicrobial activities: experimental and DFT approaches

Muhammad Ikram; Ali Haider; Syeda Tayaba Bibi; Anwar Ul-Hamid; Junaid Haider; Iram Shahzadi; Walid Nabgan; Sawaira Moeen; Salamat Ali; Souraya Goumri-Said; Mohammed Benali Kanoun

doi:10.1039/d2ra06340a

Synthesis of Al/starch co-doped in CaO nanoparticles for enhanced catalytic and antimicrobial activities: experimental and DFT approaches

RSC Adv. 2022 Nov 9;12(50):32142-32155. doi: 10.1039/d2ra06340a.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Solar Cell Applications Research Lab, Department of Physics, Government College University Lahore Lahore 54000 Punjab Pakistan dr.muhammadikram@gcu.edu.pk.
² Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture Multan 66000 Punjab Pakistan.
³ Department of Physics, RICAS, Riphah International University Lahore 54000 Pakistan.
⁴ Core Research Facilities, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals Dhahran 31261 Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Tianjin 300308 China.
⁶ Punjab University College of Pharmacy, University of the Punjab Lahore Pakistan.
⁷ Department d'Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili Tarragona 43007 Spain walid.nabgan@urv.cat.
⁸ College of Science, Physics Department, Alfaisal University P.O. Box 50927 Riyadh 11533 Saudi Arabia.
⁹ Department of Physics, College of Science, King Faisal University P.O. Box 400 Al-Ahsa 31982 Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

In this work, aluminum/starch (St)-doped CaO nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by a co-precipitation method to degrade harmful dyes in various pH media. Systematic characterization was performed to investigate the influence of Al/St dopants on the composition, crystal structure, functional groups present, optical characteristics, and morphology of CaO NPs. Further hybrid density functional analyses corroborated that the band gap energy was reduced as the Al concentration in starch-doped CaO is increased. Optical absorption spectra of the synthesized materials revealed a redshift upon doping, which indicated depletion in the band gap energy of Al/St-doped CaO. PL spectroscopy showed that the intensity of CaO was reduced by the incorporation of Al and St assigned to minimum electron-hole pair recombination. Interlayer spacing and morphological features were determined by HR-TEM. HRTEM revealed that the control sample has cubic NPs and the incorporation of St showed overlapping around agglomerated NPs. The d-spacing of CaO was little enhanced by the inclusion of dopants. Experimental outcomes indicated that the addition of Co-dopants improved the catalytic potential of CaO NPs. Al (4%)/St-doped CaO NPs expressed a significant reduction of methylene blue in a basic environment. The maximum bactericidal performance was observed as 10.25 mm and 4.95 mm in the inhibition zone against S. aureus and E. coli, respectively, after the addition of Al and St in CaO.