Facile synthesis of macroporous Ag and CuO monoliths as an efficient nonenzymatic electrochemical sensor and antimicrobial agent

An efficient, green, acid free, reliable synthetic approach has been explored for the synthesis of macroporous silver and copper oxides monoliths. The concise tuning of macroporous materials using surfactants and structural directing agents like TiO2 nanoparticles, and carbon nanotubes produces the monolith with a random network of pores, high porosity and surface area. The FESEM and BET analysis demonstrated the pore sizes of 40-500 nm and surface area in the range 40-114 m(2)/g. The XRD, EDAX and TGA analysis confirms the purity and crystallinity of monoliths. A comparative account of electrochemical sensing and antimicrobial applications has been developed. The electrochemical characterization reveals that Ag/TiO2 and CuO/TiO2 show excellent electrochemical properties and thus utilized as a nonenzymatic electrode material for simultaneous determination of Levodopa (L-dopa) and ascorbic acid (AA). The results show Ag/TiO2/GCE show excellent sensing ability with a low detection limit as 0.034 pg mL(-1) and 0.014 mu g mL(-1) in the concentration range of 0.1-20.0 mu g mL(-1) and 0.01-2.0 mu g mL(-1) for L-dopa and AA respectively. The synthesized monoliths have been tested for antimicrobial susceptibility against the 8 g-positive and gram-negative strains. The macroporous Ag/CNT exhibited better antimicrobial results against strains of Klebsiellapneumoniae, Listeria monocytogenes, Vibriovulnificus and Bacillus subtills.