Low temperature synthesis of various transition metal oxides and their antibacterial activity against multidrug resistance bacterial pathogens

We report on the synthesis and characterization of various transition metal oxides, ZnO, CuO, TiO2 and Fe2O3, using one pot wet chemical method at low temperature. The prepared metal oxide nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses. We tested antibacterial activity of as-prepared transition metal oxides against various multi-drug resistance bacterial pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Staphylococcus aureus. XRD and TEM analyses revealed the average crystallite sizes were 18 nm, 20 nm, 10 nm and 22 nm for ZnO, CuO, TiO2 and Fe2O3 nanoparticles, respectively. Further, the bacterial strains were grown in presence of different concentrations of four nanoparticles and it is evident from the results that ZnO, CuO nano particles showed greater bactericidal effect than nano-TiO2 and nano-Fe2O3, though nano-TiO2 possess less particle size than other fabricated metal oxide nanoparticles.