Many recent studies focus on the metal oxide nanoparticles due to their characteristic

catalytic, electronic and optical properties (Falcaro et al. 2016). Various synthesis methods for
these nanoparticles has been followed such as physical, chemical and biological and among
them chemical method is widely accepted which use a range of inorganic and organic
reducing agents (Yu 2007; Ihsan et al. 2015). But this method has many disadvantages like
these are expensive, toxic, high pressures, high energy requirement, difficult to separation
and highly dangerous. To overcome these, eco friendly methods are the best alternative and
so the green synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticles have been reported in topical research.
The synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticles using Calotropis gigantea leaf extract was
reported by Elumalai et al. 2015. Many similar studies were reported using different plant
extracts such as Hibiscus subdariffa (Bala et al. 2015), Gloriosa superba (Raja Naika et al.
2015), Tinospora cordifolia (Udayabhanu et al. 2015), ), Thymus vulgaris (Nasrollahzadeh et
al. 2016), Pongamia pinnata (Sundrarajan et al. 2015) and Tamarindus indica (Sharma et al.
2015).
Among the different metal oxide nanoparticles, CuO and ZnO NPs are more vital since they
have many prospective uses in the fields of biosensors, lubricant oil electronics, catalysis,
ceramics, lubricant oil, coatings, metallics, catalysis, polymers, inks, biomedical applications,
personal care products and health care products (Collins et al. 2012; Elumalai et al. 2015;
Sharma et al. 2015; Song et al. 2014). Lingaraju and his workers synthesized CuO NPs by
solution combustion method using aqueous leaf extract of Rauvlfia serpentina as a fuel
(Lingaraju et al. 2015). In dye sensitized solar cells, the leaf extract of Calotropis gigantea
was used in the synthesis of CuO NPs as electrocatalytic material (Sharama et al. 2015).
Suresh et al. on 2015 reported the green synthesis of multifunctional ZnO NPs using
Artocarpus gomezianus leaf extract by solution combustion synthesis. Ramesh at al. (2015)
suggested the green synthesis of ZnO NPs by solution based method using Solanum nigrum

leaf extract as capping agent. The present study focused on the synthesis of CuO and ZnO
NPs using the leaf extract of Camellia japonica (C. japonica). The C. japonica is used locally
to create the popular beverage tea and has also numerous medicinal applications (Jeng et al.
2007; Nasrollahzadeh et al. 2016) and so far no reports were seen regarding their use in the
synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticles. Literature study show that this plant leaf extract
contains several triterpenes, flavonoids and phenolic compounds (Zhang et al., 2011; Salinero
et al., 2012), which could have the ability to induce and stabilize metal oxide nanoparticles.
In addition, the plants extract include the secret bio-organic molecules would perform as an
efficient capping agent which would help to reduce the agglomeration of nanoparticles there
by controlling the morphology and resulting in stabilized the metal oxide nanoparticles.
Seabra and Durn 2015 suggested that the presence of capping agents might improve the
biocompatibility of biogenic nanomaterials during the synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticles.
The advantage of plant leaves extract based synthesis of CuO and ZnO NPs are gaining
significance due to its eco-friendly and cost effective manner.
Herein, we have synthesized CuO and ZnO NPs using C. japonica leaf extract which acted as
inductive and stabilizing agent. Interestingly, the synthesized CuO and ZnO NPs can be used
as sensors to detect Li+ and Ag+ metal ions with high sensitivity and selectivity. Experiments
displays that the CuO and ZnO NPs based sensors lack sufficient sensitivity and selectivity
towards other kind of metal ions such as Mn 2+, Cr3+, Hg2+, K+, Fe3+, Pb2+, Cd2+ and Ni2+ which
can readily interact with nanoparticles to cause aggregation (Ohodnicki et al. 2013; Bindhu
and Umadevi 2014). There have been no reports so far about application of green synthesized
CuO and ZnO NPs using plant leaf aqueous extract as sensors to detect metal ions and
biological molecules. Thus, a sensitive and selective method for the detection of Li + and Ag+
respectively using green approach has become attractive and highly desirable without using
expensive chemicals and instrumentation which must be functional for under developed

areas. The main advantages of the optical sensors include sensitivity, linearity, accuracy, limit
of detection, selectivity, dynamic range, reproducibility and resolution (Ozbay, 2006).
In addition, the synthesized CuO and ZnO NPs can be also used as optical sensor to detect the
biological molecules like cysteine and NADH. Under similar experimental conditions, the
optical sensor can distinguish metal ions and biological molecules from other analytes and
such sensing characteristics illustrate the sensing competence of the CuO and ZnO NPs that
might be developed to create sensitive chemical and biological sensors. The various optical
sensing methodologies were reported in the literature but the optical sensor for metal ions and
biomolecules detection using CuO and ZnO NPs has not been reported early. In the present
study, the synthesis and characterization of monodispersed CuO and ZnO NPs using leaves
extract of C. japonica has been described. The synthesized CuO and ZnO NPs were
characterized using UV, FTIR, XRD, SEM, TEM and EDS analysis. The sensing of metal
ions (Li+ and Ag+) and biomolecules (cysteine and NADH) using synthesized CuO and ZnO
NPs has also been described.