Biosynthesis of Highly Stable Fluorescent Selenium Nanoparticles and the Evaluation of Their Photocatalytic Degradation of Dye

The aquatic environment is contaminated with methylene blue (MB) due to increasing industrial activity which causes health hazard for both humans and animals. In the present study, we report a cost-effective, environmentally friendly, rapid green synthesis method for fluorescent selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) using Ficus benghalensis leaf extract. The biogenic SeNPs were characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL). The size distribution profile of SeNPs was found to be 45–95 nm, and the average size was found at 64.03 nm by DLS and SEM study. X-ray diffraction (XRD) of the sample suggests that the synthesized selenium is polycrystalline in nature. As-synthesized SeNPs were used for the photocatalytic degradation of MB in the aquatic environment. The degradation reached 57.63% in 40 min with a rate constant of 0.02162 s−1.