Synthesis, characterization and antibacterial activity of water-soluble dye-capped zinc sulphide nanoparticles from waste Zn–C battery

摘要

Capped and uncapped zinc sulphide (ZnS) nanoparticles (NPs) were successfully synthesized from used Zn–C battery, while surface was modified with capping agent 1-(carboxymethyl)-4-[(E)-2-(1,2-oxazol-3-yl)ethenyl]pyridin-1-ium. The structural properties of synthesized NPs were investigated using scanning electron microscope, energydispersive X-ray spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared and UV–visible spectroscopy.From XRD studies, cubic zinc blend structure for all the NPs was confirmed, and the crystallite size for uncapped and dyecapped NPs were calculated as 18.1 and 15.2 nm from Scherrer’s equation. Quantum espresso software was used to carryout the density functional theory calculations of dye. These dye-capped ZnS NPs proved to be excellent antibacterial agents and the minimum concentrations of pure ZnS and dye-capped ZnS NPs, which restrain the growth of bacteria, werefound to be 0.312 and 0.156 mg ml$^{-1}$ for S. typhi and 1.25 and 0.625 mg ml$^{-1}$ for B. subtilis , respectively. The bioactivitydata suggest that these organic–inorganic hybrid NPs appeared to be a new class of antibacterial agents.