Selenium nanoparticles synthesized using an eco-friendly method: dye decolorization from aqueous solutions, cell viability, antioxidant, and antibacterial effectiveness

Selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) were fabricated using a green microwave technique in the presence of ascorbic acid. The morphological features indicated that the semi-spherical SeNPs with a diameter 8.5–22 nm were configured in agglomerated spherical shapes with diameters around 0.47–0.71 μm. Furthermore, the removal of Fuchsin Basic dye from aqueous solutions was investigated upon variation of concentration of SeNPs. The degradation efficiency achieved 100% for 10 mg of SeNPs after 34 min of visible light irradiation time. The antioxidant activity was tested via DPPH radical scavenging assay and displayed that the highest scavenging capacity (311.1 ± 15.72 mg/g) was achieved by SeNPs at a concentration of 106.25 mg/mL. Otherwise, the cell viability of SeNPs through human fibroblasts cell lines in-vitro was reduced to be 75.1 ± 3.8% with nanoparticle concentration around 500 μg/mL. The antibacterial activity was investigated against gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E.coli), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumonia), Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), and Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis) bacteria after one day of exposure. It was illustrated that SeNPs did not display an activity towards Staphylococcus aureus, while it possessed the highest one against Escherichia coli with MBC of 50 ± 1.76 μg/mL compared with 26 ± 0.6 μg/mL for the standard antibiotic. These tremendous properties of SeNPs indicate that manipulating multifunctional nanoparticles for versatile wound and skin treatment applications is highly encouraging.