Every day, the issue of water scarcity worsens as a result of climate change and inadequate management of the water resources at hand. An alternative approach that is continuously investigated is the remediation of wastewater, which contains a significant quantity of organic and inorganic pollutants, via the utilization of nanomaterials possessing photocatalytic and antibacterial properties. Previous reports show that the manganese dioxide nanoparticles are an inorganic substance that exhibits antimicrobial activity and dye degradation acting as an efficient photocatalyst. Silver modification has the potential to enhance the antimicrobial activity of this oxide. In pursuit of this objective, silver doped manganese dioxide was synthesized and prepared as a nanoparticle that functions as a solar photocatalyst in degradation of industrial dyes and killing of bacteria. Prepared photocatalyst was characterized with X-ray diffraction, UV-visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, TEM and Scanning Electron Microscopy to understand its physico-chemical characterizes and evaluated for its photocatalytic behavior. Furthermore, the prepared nano-photocatalyst revealed that it is impurity-free and possesses a particle size of nanometer range. It exhibits enhanced photocatalytic activity in the degradation of malachite green dye and killing of gram negative bacteria - Escherichia coli, when exposed to ambient sunlight. Inhibition of the growth of microbe by silver doped manganese dioxide was due to the reactive oxygen species by the metal ions.
