Facile one pot microwave-assisted green synthesis of Fe2O3/Ag nanocomposites by phytoreduction: Potential application as sunlight-driven photocatalyst, antibacterial and anticancer agent.

Herein, we report a one-pot microwave assisted method to prepare an efficient Fe₂O₃/Ag nanocomposites (NCs) using Aloe vera (A. vera) gel extract as a mild, safe, renewable and active stabilizer without any harmful reagent. The advanced characterization techniques including XRD, FT-IR, UV-DRS, PL, TGA, SEM-EDX, TEM, DLS, Elemental mapping, VSM and BET were applied to analyze the morphology and structure of the prepared Fe₂O₃/Ag NCs. The results exhibited that the Fe₂O₃/Ag NCs was successfully synthesized by greener route. Furthermore, these bio-reduced Fe₂O₃/Ag NCs was tested for its catalytic degradation toward methylene blue (MB) as a model contaminant and exhibited outstanding photocatalytic degradation efficiency with 88.2% removal rate in 140 min. It was worth pointing out that the Fe₂O₃/Ag nanoparticles facilitated the charge transportation and inhibit the charge recombination of an electron in the conduction band. Additionally, the prepared Fe₂O₃/Ag NCs was studied for their in-vitro antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria and anticancer properties against A549 cell lines (human lung cancer). The biological results of this study demonstrated that A. vera gel extract derived Fe₂O₃/Ag NCs showed significant inhibition properties against bacterial strains and also capable of achieving superior action against A549 cancer cell lines.