Synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles by two different methods & comparison of their structural, antibacterial, photocatalytic and optical properties

Abstract In this work, two different methods (sol-gel and biosynthesis) were adopted for the synthesis of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles. The leaf extract of Azadirachta Indica (Neem) was utilized in the biosynthesis scheme. Structural, antibacterial, photocatalytic and optical performances of the two variants were analyzed. Both variants demonstrated a wurtzite hexagonal structure. The biosynthesized variant (25.97 nm) exhibited smaller particles than that of the sol-gel variant (33.20 nm). The morphological analysis revealed that most of the particles of the sol-gel variant remained within the range of 15 nm to 68 nm while for the biosynthesized variant the range was 10–70 nm. The antibacterial assessment was redacted by using the agar well diffusion method in which the bacteria medium was Escherichia…