Facile Synthesis of CuO and Ag Nanoparticles by Thermal Decomposition of Novel Schiff Base Complexes

In this paper, a new Schiff base was synthesized via the condensation reaction between 3-methyl-4-amino-5-mercapto-1,2,4 triazole and 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde. Also, the Cu(II) and Ag(I) complexes were synthesized. Besides, the CuO and Ag nanoparticles were synthesized via thermal decomposition of Cu(II) and Ag(I) complexes at 800 degrees C. The products were characterized using various techniques such as FT-IR, (HNMR)-H-1, elemental microanalysis, UV-Vis spectrophotometer, mass spectrophotometry, magnetic susceptibility measurements, molar conductance measurements, ESR, thermal analysis (TGA and DSC), XRD, FE-SEM, and HR-TEM. The average crystallite size of CuO and Ag nanoparticles is 55.61 and 52.07 nm, respectively. The direct band gap of the CuO and Ag samples is 2.95 and 3.20 eV, respectively. The synthesized nanoparticles were utilized as photocatalysts for the degradation of methylene blue dye in aqueous media. The % degradation of methylene blue dye (MB) is 94.25% within 20 min and 90.42% within 210 min in case of utilizing (CuO + H2O2 + UV) and (Ag + H2O2 + UV), respectively. The products were tested for studying their antimicrobial activities against some bacterial and fungal strains. The synthesized complexes and their nanoparticles show moderate activity against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacterial strains. All the products showed no activity against Aspergillus flavus and Candida albicans fungal strains. Also, the synthesized compounds were screened for studying their cytotoxic activity against the human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7). The results revealed that the Cu(II) complex could be nominated as a potential anticancer agent because it showed a cytotoxic activity (IC50 = 7.33 +/- 0.6 mu g/mL) nearly equal to that of cisplatin drug (IC50 = 5.71 mu g/mL).

Automated summary

A new Schiff base, Cu(II) and Ag(I) complexes, as well as CuO and Ag nanoparticles were synthesized and their properties and activities were studied. The nanoparticles exhibited excellent performance in photocatalytic degradation of dyes and antimicrobial activities.