Green synthesis and characterisations of antibacterial silver-polyvinyl alcohol nanocomposite films for wound dressing

Abstract

Green synthesis and characterisations of silverpolyvinyl alcohol nanocomposite films for possible environmental and biomedical applications such as wound dressing have been investigated. The synthesis was carried out in water, in an environmentally-friendly solvent using ß-D-glucose as a reducing agent and in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a bio-friendly polymer. The green synthesis approaches have advantages over conventional methods involving chemical agents associated with environmental toxicity. The formation of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and UV-visible spectroscopy. The antimicrobial activity of the synthesised Ag-PVA nanocomposite materials against strains of different bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella spp., Salmonella typhi and Staphylococcus aureus was studied.