1.

Introduction
The metal oxide nanoparticles have received great interest among the scientific
community due to their characteristic catalytic, electronic and optical properties [1].
Various physical, chemical and biological methods have been proposed for the synthesis
of metal oxide nanoparticles. The most accepted method is the chemical method which
uses various inorganic and organic reducing agents [2-3]. However, most of the chemical
methods are expensive, toxic, require high pressure and high energy requirement, difficult
for separation and highly dangerous. Hence, in recent years green methods for the
synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticles using leaf extracts of different plants such as,
Calotropis gigantea [4], Tamarindus indica [5], Thymus vulgaris [6], Gloriosa superba
[7], Tinospora cordifolia [8], Hibiscus subdariffa [9] and Pongamia pinnata [10] have
been already reported.
CuO and ZnO NPs are important metal oxides because of their potential use in a
wide range of fields like, electronics, ceramics, polymers, inks, metallics, lubricant oil,
coatings, health care products, personal care products, biosensors, catalysis and
biomedical applications [15,4,5]. Lingaraju and his workers synthesized CuO NPs by
solution combustion method using aqueous leaf extract of Rauvlfia serpentina (Lingaraju
et al., 2015). The leaf extract of Calotropis gigantea was also used in the CuO NPs
synthesis using electrocatalytic materials in dye sensitized solar cells as aqueous medium
(Sharma et al., 2015). Suresh and co-workers reported the green synthesis of
multifunctional ZnO NPs using Artocarpus gomezianus leaf extract by solution
combustion synthesis (Suresh et al., 2015). Ramesh at al., (2015) suggested the green
synthesis of ZnO NPs by solution based method using Solanum nigrum leaf extract as

capping agent. There has been no report available so far related to employ the leaf extract
of Camellia japonica (C. japonica) for the synthesis of CuO and ZnO NPs. The C.
japonica is used locally to create the popular beverage tea and has also numerous
medicinal applications [11,6]. Literatures showed that this plant leaf extract contains
several triterpenes, flavonoids and phenolic compounds [12-13], which could have the
ability to induce and stabilize metal oxide nanoparticles. The leaf extract which contain
the secret bio-organic molecules would act as an efficient capping agent which could help
to reduce the agglomeration of nanoparticles there by controlling the morphology and
also to stabilize the metal oxide nanoparticles. The presence of capping agents during the
synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticles may improve the biocompatibility of biogenic
nanomaterials [14]. The plant leaves extract based synthesis of CuO and ZnO NPs are
gaining significance as it is eco-friendly and cost effective without using toxic chemicals.
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.
But the green synthesized CuO and ZnO NPs based sensors lack sufficient sensitivity and
selectivity towards other kinds of metal ions such as Fe 3+, Ni2+, Mn2+, Hg2+, Cd2+, K+, Pb
and Cr+ because these can readily interact with CuO and ZnO NPs to cause aggregation
[16,17]. 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 Li+ and Ag+ metal ions
and biological molecules (cysteine and NADH). 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 costly chemicals and instrumentation which becomes

particularly important for under developed areas. The main advantages of the optical
sensors include sensitivity, selectivity, linearity, resolution, accuracy, reproducibility,
dynamic range, and limit of detection [18].
In addition, synthesized CuO and ZnO NPs can be also used as optical sensor to
detect the biological molecules like cysteine and NADH. The various optical sensing
methodologies were reported in the literature, the optical sensor for metal ions and
biomolecules detection using CuO and ZnO NPs has not been reported early. The
demonstrated optical sensor can distinguish metal ions and biological molecules from
other analytes under similar experimental conditions. Such sensing characteristics of the
present sensor, point out the sensing capabilities of the CuO and ZnO NPs that could be
refined to produce sensitive chemical and biological sensors. 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.

Green colour corrected. You can just read that and make it to black.
Red colour have doubt. Check it out.