Characterization and study of physical properties and antibacterial activities of human hair keratin–silver nanoparticles and keratin–gold nanoparticles coated cotton gauze fabric

Abstract

Human hairs are considered as major waste from barbershops. It contains an important protein called keratin. Keratin from human hair exhibits biocompatibility, wound-healing property, biodegradability, and antibacterial property. Silver and gold nanoparticles are commonly used in wound-healing applications. These nanoparticles possess excellent functional properties like antibacterial, wound healing and biocompatibility and applicable in biomedical field. In this study, silver and gold nanoparticles were used along with human hair keratin for the production of antibacterial materials. The functional properties of these two materials are synergized for wound-healing applications. Silver and gold nanoparticles were synthesized by chemical reduction method. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized using UV–Visible, particle size, and zeta potential analyses. The prepared materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopic analyses and they were measured for the physical properties such as air permeability, water contact angle, moisture content, and water absorbency. Furthermore, the antibacterial activities were evaluated against burn wound bacteria. Superior antibacterial activities and adequate physical properties found in keratin/nanoparticles immobilized cotton samples.

Biological Synthesis of Keratin Nanoparticles From Dove Feather (Columba Livia) and Its Applications

“…Likewise, keratin nanoparticles from controlled gastric mucoadhesion with an average size ranged from 200 to 400 nm, which was consistent with the result of particle size detection [15]. Keratin silver nanoparticles are in the range of 50-100 nm with an average size of 71.8 nm and keratin gold nanoparticles are in the range of 8-30 nm with mean size of 14.0 nm [13].…”

“…7). The peaks around 0.5 keV, 1.5 keV, 2 keV, and 5 keV for the samples of keratin nanoparticles correspond to the binding energy of C, O, Na, and Ag, respectively [13].…”

“…Similarly, Meignanalakshmi et al [12] reported that the size of keratin nanoparticles was 78 nm. Keratin nanoparticles complexes are spherical in nature, particle size was found to be 100-160 nm [13].…”

Silver bullets: A new lustre on an old antimicrobial agent

“…(Naseri-Nosar and Ziora 2018) Examples are cotton cellulosic films impregnated with silver nanoparticles (Pannerselvam, Jothinathan et al 2017), formulations of silver sulfadiazine and bacterial cellulose, (Shao, Liu et al 2016), or the combination of silver sulfadiazine with poly (ethylene glycol) hydrogels to control infections in burnt wounds. (McMahon, Kennedy et al 2016) The combination of silver nanoparticles with keratin leads to an material with antibacterial activity against wound bacteria, (Shanmugasundaram and Ramkumar 2018), while the combination with cellulose leads to an antifouling material (Adepu and Khandelwal 2018), and chitin-silver nanocomposites were active against bacteria and fungi. (Solairaj and Rameshthangam 2017)…”

Effect of Chemically Engineered Au/Ag Nanorods on the Optical and Mechanical Properties of Keratin Based Films

“…Beside the aforementioned properties, Au and AgNPs have a strong binding affinity for ligands containing -SH, -NH 2 , and -COOH functional groups (Luo, 2007), which are also present in proteins such as fibroin, keratin etc. Indeed, several works report the preparation of stable Ag and Au NPs using extracted wool keratin as capping agent (Lü and Cui, 2010;Shanmugasundaram and Ramkumar, 2018), in order to combine their antibacterial properties for wound-healing applications. Diversely, only few reports are focused on the preparation of keratin-plasmonic NPs composites films (Tran et al, 2016(Tran et al, , 2018 and on their potential application in electronic devices.…”