ZabnAllah M. Alaizeri, Syed Mansoor Ali, Hisham A. Alhadlaq
Due to their excellent physicochemical properties, the nanoparticles (NPs) have been utilized in various potential applications, including environmental remediation, energy storage, and nanomedicine. In this work, the ultrasonic and manual stirring approaches were used to integrate yttrium oxide (Y2O3) nanoparticles (NPs) into reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to enhance their photocatalytic and anticancer properties. Pure Y2O3NPs, Y2O3/RGO NCs, and Y2O3/CNTs NCs were characterized using different analytical techniques, such as XRD, SEM, EDX with Elemental Mapping, FTIR, UV-Vis, PL, and DLS to investigate their improved structural, surface morphological, chemical bonding, optical, and surface charge properties. XRD data confirmed the successful integration of Y2O3into RGO and CNTs, with minor changes in crystallite sizes. SEM images with EDX analysis revealed that Y2O3NPs were uniformly distributed on RGO and CNTs, reducing aggregation. Chemical bonding and interactions between Y2O3and carbon materials were investigated using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis. UV and PL results suggest that the optical studies showed a shift in absorption peaks upon integration with RGO and CNTs. This indicates enhanced light absorption and modifications to the band gap between (3.79–4.40 eV) for the obtained samples. In the photocatalytic experiment, the degradation efficiency of bromophenol blue (BPB) dye for Y2O3RGO NCs was up to 87.3%, outperforming pure Y2O3NPs (45.83%) and Y2O3/CNTs NCs (66.78%) after 120 min of UV irradiation. Additionally, the MTT assay demonstrated that Y2O3/RGO NCs exhibited the highest anticancer activity against MG-63 bone cancer cells with an IC50 value of 45.7 µg/mL compared to Y2O3CNTs NCs and pure Y2O3NPs. This work highlights that Y2O3/RGO NCs could be used in significant applications, including environmental remediation and in vivo cancer therapy studies.