CuO‐SiO2 based nanocomposites: Synthesis, characterization, photocatalytic, antileishmanial, and antioxidant studies

Abstract The abatement of toxic pollutants and drug‐resistant pathogens from water is one of the major environmental issues. In this work, we are reporting the preparation, detailed characterization and photocatalytic degradation, and biological activities of bimetallic oxides (CuO‐SiO 2 ) nanocomposite. For this purpose, CuO, SiO 2 nanoparticles, and CuO‐SiO 2 nanocomposites were successfully synthesized through sol–gel process. The nanoparticles and nanocomposite were prepared by taking the Cu(NO 3 ) 2 .3H 2 O as copper oxide precursor and TEOS as silica precursor using absolute ethanol and water as solvents The molar ratio of TEOS: Glycerol: H 2 O used was 1.5:1:6.6 respectively. The synthesized nanoparticles and nanocomposites were characterized by using Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET). The nanocomposites and individual nanoparticles were then applied as catalysts for their activities toward catalytic/photocatalytic degradation of crystal violet (CV) dye in an aqueous medium. The degradation progress was monitored by UV–Visible spectroscopic analysis. It was found that CuO‐SiO 2 nanocomposite shows good photocatalytic activities toward the removal of crystal violet dye as compared to the catalytic activities of its individual constitutes. The antileishmanial and antioxidant activities results indicate that synthesized materials have promising biological attributes.