Breaking Barriers in Eco-Friendly Synthesis of Plant-Mediated Metal/Metal Oxide/Bimetallic Nanoparticles: Antibacterial, Anticancer, Mechanism Elucidation, and Versatile Utilizations

Abstract

Nanotechnology has emerged as a promising field in pharmaceutical research, involving producing unique nanoscale materials with sizes up to 100 nm via physiochemical and biological approaches. Nowadays more emphasis has been given to eco-friendly techniques for developing nanomaterials to enhance their biological applications and minimize health and environmental risks. With the help of green nanotechnology, a wide range of green metal, metal oxide, and bimetallic nanoparticles with distinct chemical compositions, sizes, and morphologies have been manufactured which are safe, economical, and environment friendly. Due to their biocompatibility and vast potential in biomedical (antibacterial, anticancer, antiviral, analgesic, anticoagulant, biofilm inhibitory activity) and in other fields such as (nanofertilizers, fermentative, food, and bioethanol production, construction field), green metal nanoparticles have garnered significant interest worldwide. The metal precursors combined with natural extracts such as plants, algae, fungi, and bacteria to get potent novel metal, metal oxide, and bimetallic nanoparticles such as Ag, Au, Co, Cu, Fe, Zr, Zn, Ni, Pt, Mg, Ti, Pd, Cd, Bi₂O₃, CeO₂, Co₃O₄, CoFe₂O₄, CuO, Fe₂O₃, MgO, NiO, TiO₂, ZnO, ZrO₂, Ag-Au, Ag-Cr, Ag-Cu, Ag-Zn, Ag-CeO₂, Ag-CuO, Ag-SeO₂, Ag-TiO₂, Ag-ZnO, Cu-Ag, Cu-Mg, Cu-Ni, Pd-Pt, Pt-Ag, ZnO-CuO, ZnO-SeO, ZnO-Se, Se-Zr, and Co-Bi₂O₃. These plant-mediated green nanoparticles possess excellent antibacterial and anticancer activity when tested against several microorganisms and cancer cell lines. Plants contain essential phytoconstituents (polyphenols, flavonoids, terpenoids, glycosides, alkaloids, etc.) compared to other natural sources (bacteria, fungi, and algae) in higher concentration that play a vital role in the development of green metal, metal oxide, and bimetallic nanoparticles because these plant-phytoconstituents act as a reducing, stabilizing, and capping agent and helps in the development of green nanoparticles. After concluding all these findings, this review has been designed for the first time in such a way that it imparts satisfactory knowledge about the antibacterial and anticancer activity of plant-mediated green metal, metal oxide, and bimetallic nanoparticles together, along with antibacterial and anticancer mechanisms. Additionally, it provides information about characterization techniques (UV–vis, FT-IR, DLS, XRD, SEM, TEM, BET, AFM) employed for plant-mediated nanoparticles, biomedical applications, and their role in other industries. Hence, this review provides information about the antibacterial and anticancer activity of various types of plant-mediated green metal, metal oxide, and bimetallic nanoparticles and their versatile application in diverse fields which is not covered in other pieces of literature.