Title: Metal doped BiOI based photocatalyst for the degradation of antibiotics and bacteria

Abstract

Tetracycline (TC) is one of the most commonly used broad-spectrum antibiotics to treat bacterial infection. TC antibiotics enter into the environment because of partial metabolism in humans and animals, thereby increasing environmental toxicity. Therefore, it is highly needed to treat TC antibiotics from the water system. In this aspect, the present work focus on the synthesis of metals incorporated bismuth-oxy-iodide (M-BiOI) based photocatalyst materials by varying metal and amount of metals. Figure. 1 shows the schematic representation of the M-BiOI based photocatalyst material. The incorporation of the metals within the BiOI aided advantages that decrease the band gap value. Interestingly, incorporation of the metals within the BiOI increases the oxygen defects, thereby high photo-degradation ability. The prepared M-BiOI based photocatalyst efficiently degrade antibiotics from water. The photocatalytic activity against bacteria of the M-BiOI was also determined. The data suggested that the prepared M-BiOI based photocatalyst materials efficiently inhibit bacterial strains. Therefore, the prepared M-BiOI based photocatalyst materials shows potential ability for efficient degradation of antibiotics compounds as well as bacteria.

Biography

Dr. Neetu Talreja is working as a Researcher at, Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Concepcion, Concepcion 4070409, Chile. She has completed Ph.D. in Chemistry from the collaboration of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, and Banasthali University, Banasthali, India. Before joined the University of Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile, She worked as a Researcher at the University of La Serena, Chile, Gachon University, South Korea, and Department of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China. Dr. Neetu's research focuses mainly on interdisciplinary science involving nanomaterials and chemical sciences such as synthesis, characterization of nanomaterials mainly two-dimensional nanomaterials, and polymeric composite-based materials for energy and environmental applications. The leading field of science that is relevant to her area of interest consists of nanotechnology, nano-bioscience, energy, and environmental remediation applications of polymeric composite/nanotechnology. Dr. Neetu has wide experience of handling various characterization tools such as scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Zeta-sizer to investigate zeta potentials, and particle size/agglomeration behavior of nanoparticles/carbon-based materials in liquid media, thermo-gravimetric analysis, x-ray diffraction (XRD), surface area analyzer, Fourier transformed spectroscopy and atomic field microscopy (AFM) for the characterization of different materials.