RESUMO
The world is facing alarming challenges of environmental pollution due to uncontrolled water contamination and multiple drug resistance of pathogens. However, these challenges can be addressed by using novel nanocomposites materials such as, SnO2/graphene nanopaletelets (GNPs) nanocomposites remarkably. In this work, we have prepared SnO2nanorods and SnO2/GNPs nanocomposites (GS-I and GS-II) with size of 25 ± 6 nm in length and 4 ± 2 nm in diameter. The optical bandgap energies change from 3.14 eV to 2.80 eV in SnO2and SnO2/GNPs nanocomposite. We found that SnO2/GNPs nanocomposite (GS-II) completely removes (99.11%) malachite green in 12 min, under UV light exposure, while under same conditions, SnO2nanorods removes only 37% dye. Moreover, visible light exposure resulted in 99.01% removal of malachite green in 15 min by GSII as compared to 24.7% removal by SnO2. In addition, GS-II nanocomposite inhibits 79.57% and 78.51% growth ofP. aeruginosaandS. aureusrespectively. A synchronized contribution of SnO2and GNPs makes SnO2/GNPs nanocomposites (GS-II) an innovative multifunctional material for simultaneous fast and complete removal of malachite green and inhibition of drug resistant pathogens.