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Water pollution by heavy metal ions, azo dyes, and bacteria is an emerging problem that needs to be addressed via a sustainable, facile treatment approach. Herein, Phytochemical-enriched Carissa macrocarpa fruit extract was used as a reducing and stabilising agent in this one-pot, economical, and environmentally safe method of biosynthesizing AgNPs under direct sunlight. CMFE@AgNPs were completely characterised by employing UV-Vis, FTIR, HR-TEM, EDX, XRD, DLS, and ZP analysis. The AgNPs are spherical with 50 nm particle size, highly stable, and with a face-centred cubic structure. Based on AgNPs’ colour quenching, the CMFE@AgNPs demonstrated highly selective colorimetric sensing of Hg2+ in spiked distilled, tap, and river water samples with a remarkable detection limit of 18.45 μM. Additionally, CMFE@AgNPs revealed efficient photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange (77.3%) and methylene blue (88.9%) in just 150 minutes of exposure to sunlight. Thermodynamic and kinetic insight to the degradation reaction was investigated. Effective antibacterial action against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria has also been demonstrated by CMFE@AgNPs. With an IC50 value of 23.4 ± 1.5 μg/mL, CMFE@AgNPs have demonstrated strong antioxidant activity in comparison to normal gallic acid (IC50 = 22.3 ± 1.2 μg/mL). Hence, this facile approach for CMFE-assisted production of AgNPs may have a promising potential in wastewater remediation and antioxidant ointments.
Siddique et al. (Mon,) studied this question.