Evaluation and comparison of physic-chemical properties and cytotoxic -performance of cerium oxide and zinc-doped cerium oxide nanoparticles

This paper presented the green synthesis of pure and 5% zinc doped cerium oxide nanoparticles (Zn-CeO2 NPs) by using the root extract of Prosopis farcta. Green synthesis is a method of synthesizing nanoparticles without the use of chemical solvents and is environmentally friendly and safe.The physic-chemical properties of the obtained nanoparticles were studied through the results of PXRD, UV-Vis, DRS, FESEM, EDX, and Raman techniques. The outcomes of EDX and PXRD confirmed the presence of doped zinc in the structure of cerium oxide. The particle sizes of pure and Zn-CeO2 NPs were 20 and 8 nm. Additionally, we evaluated the cytotoxic performance of synthesized nanoparticles on brain glioblastoma cells (U87), which resulted in displaying the stronger toxic effect of zinc doped nanoparticle when compared to pure cerium oxide nanoparticles. Therefore, it is indicated that zinc doped cerium oxide nanoparticles are capable of exhibiting a superior anti-cancer impact on U87 cells.