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.