Synthesis, characterization and enhanced antimicrobial activity of reduced graphene oxide-zinc oxide nanocomposite

In this work, we report a simple and facile one-pot chemical approach of the decoration of uniform zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) on reduced graphene oxide (GO) and a study of its antimicrobial activity. The nanocomposite was fully characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). TEM and SEM images clearly indicated the presence of Graphene sheets decorated with uniformly sized zinc oxide nanoparticles. Further, as an application of rGO-ZnO nanocomposites, their superior antibacterial activity was demonstrated on the Escherichia coli MTCC40 bacterial strain, using the standard disk diffusion method. This clearly showed that rGO-ZnO nanocomposites exhibited more pronounced antibacterial activity than rGO alone. This feature was revealed to be due to increased biocompatibility of PEGylated rGO-ZnO nanocomposites. In conclusion, the as-synthesized nanocomposite showed excellent antibacterial activity and has great potential for biomedical application.