Facile green synthesis of ZnFe2O4/rGO nanohybrids and evaluation of its photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutant, photo antibacterial and cytotoxicity activities

[Display omitted] In this work, we report a facile hydrothermal green synthesis of ZnFe2O4/reduced graphene oxide nanohybrids (denoted as G-ZnFe2O4/rGO NHs) in the presence of orange peel extract as natural surfactant. The obtained G-ZnFe2O4/rGO NHs were systematically characterized in detail, and then they were served as photocatalyst for degradation of methylene blue (MB) and in vitro biological applications. Importantly, the as-prepared G-ZnFe2O4/rGO NHs showed best photocatalytic performance (92.4 %) than bare G-ZnFe2O4 toward methylene blue degradation under visible light irradiation. In addition, the photo antibacterial and in-vitro anticancer activity of the resulting nanohybrids were evaluated against Escherichia coli and A549 cell line respectively. Under a simulated visible irradiation for 40 min, the G-ZnFe2O4/rGO NHs exhibited effective antibacterial activity and the bacterial survival was found to be 29.43 ± 4.2 %. The cytotoxic activity of the G-ZnFe2O4/rGO NHs showed significant cytotoxic activity against A549 cell line with an IC50 value of 249.9 μg/mL. The present study clearly suggests that G-ZnFe2O4/rGO NHs have great potential in various tribological applications for saving energy, economic, environmental remediation, and biomedical applications.