Synthesis and characterization of Ag doped ZnO nanomaterial as an effective photocatalyst for photocatalytic degradation of Eriochrome Black T dye and antimicrobial agent

Doped ZnO nanomaterials are a type of material that can be used for photocatalysis and antibacterial applications. The metal dopant improves the overall performance of the photocatalyst by lowering the band gap energy and lowering electron–hole recombination. Likewise, metal dopants result in a significant increase in antimicrobial potential. Premised on these compelling viewpoints, we present a straightforward co-precipitation approach for synthesizing ZnO and 5% Ag modified ZnO (Ag/ZnO), as well as their applicability in photocatalysis and antibacterial study. The synthesized ZnO and Ag/ZnO nanomaterials are well characterized by Ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis. From the UV–Vis analysis, it has been established that silver doping resulted in a decline in the band gap of ZnO. The XRD investigations indicated hexagonal wurtzite structure for ZnO and Ag/ZnO with average nanoparticle sizes of 25.37 and 20.23 nm, respectively. The porous morphology of produced nanomaterials was shown by FE-SEM analysis, while the elemental composition was validated by EDS. The ZnO and Ag/ZnO were successfully employed for the photocatalysis of Eriochrome Black T (EBT) dye and antimicrobial screening. Various parameters like catalyst dose, the effect of contact dye, and the effect of initial dye concentration were investigated which proved that Ag/ZnO is more proficient in the degradation of EBT dye than ZnO. Besides, the radical scavenging study was to explore the presence of reactive oxygen species in photocatalytic degradation. The kinetic study revealed the involvement of Pseudo first-order kinetics. Furthermore, the Ag/ZnO was recycled and reused for multiple cycles which indicated its stability and reusability performance. The antibacterial studies of ZnO and Ag/ZnO against S.aureas, B. subtilis, K. pneumoniae and E. coli and antifungal studies against A. niger and C. albicans were investigated. The antibacterial and antifungal screening clearly emphasized that silver doping has an excellent effect on the augmentation of the antimicrobial performance of ZnO.