Ag-Decorated Iron Oxides-Silica Magnetic Nanocomposites with Antimicrobial and Photocatalytic Activity

Nanotechnology offers unlimited possibilities for creating effective hybrid materials, which combine functional performance in environment depollution and antimicrobial defense with a lack of toxicity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and natural availability. This paper presents the silver effect on photocatalytic and antibacterial activities of double-coated iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs), Fe₃O₄@SiO₂/ZnO-Ag. The structural, morphological, and textural information of the, core-shell iron oxides-based superparamagnetic nanoparticles (IOMNPs) decorated with 5% Ag by ultrasound-assisted synthesis were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller physisorption measurements. Although two synthesis temperatures of 95 and 80 °C were used for the co-precipitated iron oxide cores, the XRD patterns revealed the formation of a single magnetite, Fe₃O₄, phase. The sorption-photocatalytic activities under dark and UV irradiation encountered a maximum removal efficiency of the MB (90.47%) for the Fe₃O₄@SiO₂/ZnO-Ag sample with iron oxide core obtained at 80 °C. The rate constant for the second-order kinetics was 0.0711 min^-1 for 2 h, and the correlation coefficient R² closed to unity. Two samples with Ag-decorated hybrid SiO₂/ZnO shell and hierarchically interconnected porous structure with large surface area (328.8 and 342.5 m²g^-1) exhibited the best disk diffusion antimicrobial activity against four microorganisms, especially gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus.