LAUSR

Novel nanoclusters (NCs) of Cu/Cr/Ni/O were produced by a green synthesis approach using leaf extracts of E. campestre and F. subpinnata at room temperature and pH 7. Characterization of the produced NCs using EDS, XRD, and FESEM revealed that E. campestre results in CuO-Cr2O3-NiO nanocomposites with average crystallite size of 29.2 nm, while binary and ternary Cu-Cr-Ni-O nanoalloys of averaged 9.8 nm crystallite size are produced using F. subpinnata leaf extract. In addition, bioreduction mechanism of the metal ions was investigated for both plant extracts by evaluating total phenolics/total flavonoids, HPLC chromatograms of the leaf extracts, and FTIR spectra of the extracts before and after the bioreduction reaction. It was found that phenolic acids are the main responsibility for the bioreduction of the metal ions. In particular, chlorogenic acid, rosmarinic acid, and syringic acids for the nanoalloys produced by reducing potential of F. subpinnata, and rosmarinic acid for the nanocomposites synthesized using E. campestre were identified as the main reducing agents. FTIR studies revealed that in CuO-Cr2O3-NiO nanocomposites, aliphatic and aldehyde amine groups and in Cu-Cr-Ni-O nanoalloys, aliphatic and aldehyde amine, and nitrile groups act as both capping and stabilizing ligands.