Facile synthesized novel hybrid graphene oxide/cobalt ferrite magnetic nanoparticles based surface coating material inhibit bacterial secretion pathway for antibacterial effect.

Nanomaterial based paints are in current demand in the area of surface protective coatings due to the significant advances made to improve their antibacterial and anticorrosion characteristics. In this work, we have developed magnetic graphene oxide (MGO) paint with the incorporation of cobalt ferrite (CF) and graphene oxide (GO) along with paint materials by using high energy ball milling (HEBM). Morphological, elemental and functional analysis of the MGO paint is studied with ESEM, AFM, Raman, FTIR spectroscopy. EDS and PIXE methods are used for elemental analysis. Thermal analysis shows that the MGO film was stable up to 100 °C. The saturation magnetization of CF MNP is observed as 76 emu/g and it is reduced to 12 emu/g for MGP paint. The detailed antibacterial study of the prepared MGO paint has performed with S. typhimurium and E. coli. The dead-live assessment shows the dead population for S. typhimurium is superior up to 82% whereas it is 20% for E. coli. The morphological damage of bacterial cells is studied using SEM technique. Flow cytometry analysis of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation experiments and computational analysis supported the proposed mechanism of induced ROS for the damage of bacterial membrane via interaction of GO and CF with bacterial proteins leading to alteration in their functionality. The observed results indicate that the prepared MGO paint could be a better candidate in the area of nano paint for surface protective coatings.