Biological Assessment of Wet-Chemically Prepared SnO₂ Nanoparticles: Evaluating Antimicrobial Response and SKMEL Melanoma Cytotoxicity

Abstract The increasing interest on tin oxide nanoparticles due to its properties and biological activity may have promising application in the biomedical field. In the present work, SnO 2 nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized via a co-precipitation method with aqueous ammonia as precipitating agents, both with and without addition of the surfactant Triton X-100 followed by a calcination process was developed. Structural characterization, morphology, elemental composition, chemical surface nature, optical properties, and the thermal stability of SnO 2 NPs were investigated by utilizing XRD, SEM-EDS, FTIR, Raman, PL, and TGA. Antibacterial studies against six different strains were investigated by the agar well-diffusion method. The highest inhibition zone was found against Klebsiella pneumoniae (12 mm for S4), and inhibition range of Staphylococcus aureus was 9 mm for S1 and S3 respectively. In vitro cytotoxicity activity against SKMEL melanoma cells showed concentration dependent of cell mortality and S4 exhibited the higher activity with an IC 50 is 66.96 µg/mL, and followed by S3 (95.57 µg/mL). We hypothesize that surface defects may drive bioactivity and the research also suggests that the synthesis condition affect the material physico-chemical and bioactivity properties and provide the base for subsequent application of SnO 2 NPs.