Photocatalytic and Antioxidant Studies of Bioinspired ZrO2 Nanoparticles Using Agriculture Waste Durva Grass Aqueous Extracts

This study mainly focused on the usage of an environmentally benign route for the synthesis of ZrO2 NPs using agro-waste durva grass aqueous extracts. The bioinspired ZrO2 NPs were well characterised by using different sophisticated instrumentation techniques like UV-Vis, FT-IR, XRD, TEM, EDAX, and DLS. The formation of ZrO2 NPs was primarily confirmed by its characteristic absorption band at 342 nm using UV-Visible spectroscopic analysis. The crystal structure of the ZrO2 NPs was confirmed by powder-XRD analysis with a crystallite size of 18 nm. The phytochemical stabilization of ZrO2 NPs was checked by FT-IR spectroscopy. HR-TEM results revealed the formation of spherical-shaped ZrO2 NPs with an average particle size of 25 nm. The Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDAX) spectroscopy technique was used to identify the elemental composition of the ZrO2 NPs. Also, the synthesized ZrO2 NPs showed the degradation of environmental pollutant Methylene blue and Rhodamine B dyes, while it exhibited good antioxidant activity which was checked by DPPH scavenging assay.