Fabrication of zinc oxide nanostructure as antibacterial agent

摘要

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures play an important role in industrial sectors because of its special characteristics such as anticorrosion, antibacterial, low electron conductivity and excellent heat resistance. This study is focused on synthesizing and characterizing zinc oxide nanostructures using sol-gel method based on zinc acetate as a precursor. The sol-gel method is a simple method but it enables adjusting the geometry of nanostructure and controlling the particle size. ZnO nanostructures were characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET). The antibacterial properties of ZnO was tested against a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli), a gram-negative bacteria. The result shows that the ZnO wire-like nanostructure was successfully synthesized using sol-gel method at three different reaction time conditions and it has a great potential to be developed as antibacterial agent due to its activity in inhibiting the growth of bacteria.