Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Chemistry Africa https://doi.org/10.1007/s42250-019-00112-8 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Synthesis of CaO–Ag‑NPs @CaCO 3 Nanocomposite via Impregnation of Aqueous Sol Ag‑NPs onto Calcined Calcium Oxalate Fawzi S. Kodeh 1  · Issa M. El‑Nahhal 1  · Emad Abou Elkhair 2  · Ata H. Darwish 3 Received: 10 August 2019 / Accepted: 6 December 2019 © The Tunisian Chemical Society and Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 Abstract In this research CaO–Ag-NPs @CaCO 3 nanocomposite was prepared by treatment of calcined calcium oxalate [CaO, Ca(OH) 2 and CaCO 3 ] with sol of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs). Several techniques were used to investigate the structural properties of CaO–Ag-NPs@CaCO 3 nanocomposite including FTIR, UV/VIS, XRD, TEM and TGA. XRD and TEM and UV/VIS results showed that silver nanoparticles incorporated with calcium oxide (CaO–Ag-NPs) are incorporated with calcium carbonate (CaO–Ag-NPs@CaCO 3 ). It is confrmed that the CaO–Ag-NPs @CaCO 3 nanocomposite showed strong antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aurous. Keywords Silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) · CaO–Ag-NPs@CaCO 3 nanomaterial · Aqueous sol of Ag–NPs · Antimicrobial activity · Calcium oxalate 1 Introduction Immobilization of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) into solid substrates to obtain materials with desirable properties has recently received considerable attention [1–5]. Some of these solid supports include polymer matrices, calcium carbonates (egg shells) and silica supports [6–12]. These materials perhaps are very interesting and promising, due to their broad antimicrobial activity and their other potential applications in a wide range of felds [8–10, 13–15]. Variety of methods was employed to incorporate silver nanoparticles into inorganic substrates by impregnation method [16] or by anchoring them onto the surface of solid supports [17, 18]. Several other attempts to immobilize Ag- NPs with polymers have been already proposed including silica [19] and on natural fbers [20]. The porous nature of some forms of CaCO3 makes them suitable candidates such as catalyst supports, fllers, biomimetic scafolds for target materials. Thus, CaCO3 particles were ftted as nonreactive support for silver nanoparticle (20 nm) as they showed sig- nifcant antimicrobial activity. The resulting composite Ag- NPs/CaCO 3 particles showed signifcant antimicrobial activ- ity. It was also tested for an additive of a commercial paint [21]. Novel hybrid antibacterial microparticles, Ag-NPs/ CaCO 3 , consisting of Ag-NPs incorporated into calcium car- bonate/polymer microparticles of CaCO 3 , were obtained in a simple synthetic procedure carried out in aqueous environ- ment and involving non-toxic compounds [22]. Originally prepared Ag with diameters in the range of 30–50 nm were used in co-precipitation process which results in the forma- tion of Ag-NPs/CaCO 3 spherical microparticles. Recently a sensors based on Ag-NPs/CaCO 3 was designed. Such inor- ganic composites have huge potential medical application [23]. a dual-use sorbent for solid phase extraction (SPE) in combination with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The sorbent consists of calcium carbonate micro- particles with incorporated silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) and magnetic nanoparticles (Fe 3 O 4 ) [24]. More recently, the incorporation of silver nanoparticles into egg-shell powder of porous calcium carbonate based material have been reported as a promising and interesting nanomaterial [5]. The use of calcium carbonate obtained from eggshells in fabricating silver nanocomposite is due to its excellent environmental compatibility, bio-compatibility and biodeg- radability. Due to the complex procedure that have been used * Fawzi S. Kodeh kodih@hotmail.com 1 Department of Chemistry, Al-Azhar University, Jamal Abdel Nasser St., P.O. Box 1277, Gaza, Palestine 2 Department of Microbiology, Al-Azhar University, P.O. Box 1277, Gaza, Palestine 3 Department of Science Methodology, Al-Azhar University, P.O. Box 1277, Gaza, Palestine