Bactericidal Silver Nanoparticles by Atmospheric Pressure Solution Plasma Processing

Abstract

Silver nanoparticles have applications in plasmonics, medicine, catalysis and electronics. We report a simple, cost-effective, facile and reproducible technique to synthesise silver nanoparticles via plasma-induced non-equilibrium liquid chemistry with the absence of a chemical reducing agent. Silver nanoparticles with tuneable sizes from 5.4 to 17.8 nm are synthesised and characterised using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and other analytic techniques. A mechanism for silver nanoparticle formation is also proposed. The antibacterial activity of the silver nanoparticles was investigated with gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. The inhibition of both bacteria types was observed. This is a promising alternative method for the instant synthesis of silver nanoparticles, instead of the conventional chemical reduction route, for numerous applications.

Plasma for biomedical decontamination: from plasma-engineered to plasma-active antimicrobial surfaces

“…Compared with conventional wet chemistry approaches that require toxic chemical reducing agents under harsh reaction conditions, the plasma-based method offers a facile, efficient, and reducing agent free route for NPs synthesis. Indeed, some recent work has demonstrated the highly bactericidal effects of plasmasynthesized NPs such as Ag NPs [30] and CuO NPs [31]. Therefore, incorporating these plasma-synthesized antimicrobial NPs into a polymeric coating by plasma surface engineering (e.g.…”

Optimized Synthesis Approaches of Metal Nanoparticles with Antimicrobial Applications

“…The antibacterial activity of the silver nanoparticles was investigated for both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The inhibition for both bacteria was noticed [50]. Nanosilver also has antifungal activity and could inhibit a large number of ordinary fungal strains [3,51,52].…”

“…Together with AgNps, the gold nanoparticles such as nanoshells, nanocages, and spherical shapes show an effective photothermic destruction of cancer cells and tissue. The NP size plays a key role in their long circulation, biodistribution, and clearance [43,50].…”

Microplasma Synthesis of Antibacterial Active Silver Nanoparticles in Sodium Polyacrylate Solutions

“…is is because plasma does not provide for the use of reducing reagents A feature of the microplasma is the generation of electrons (f − ) during the discharge, which are hydrated in aqueous solutions (4). e latter (f − aq ) reduce metal ions (5) and cause the formation of H• and OH radicals and new compounds, in particular, H 2 O 2 [14]. Some of them are reducing agents for many metal ions ( 6) and (7).…”

“…e microplasma glow discharge method is used to synthesize mainly noble metal nanoparticles [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Studies in recent years indicate the possibility of obtaining nanoparticles from nonferrous metals [31][32][33][34][35].…”