Synthesis of plant-mediated silver nanoparticles using papaya fruit extract and evaluation of their anti microbial activities

Abstract

There is an increasing commercial demand for nanoparticles due to their wide applicability in various areas such as electronics, catalysis, chemistry, energy, and medicine. Metallic nanoparticles are traditionally synthesized by wet chemical techniques, where the chemicals used are quite often toxic and flammable. In this work, we describe a cost effective and environment friendly technique for green synthesis of silver nanoparticles from 1mM AgNO3 solution through the extract of papaya fruit as reducing as well as capping agent. Nanoparticles were characterized using UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy, FTIR, XRD and SEM. X-ray diffraction and SEM analysis showed the average particle size of 15 nm as well as revealed their cubic structure. Further these biologically synthesized nanoparticles were found to be highly toxic against different multi drug resistant human pathogens. This is for the first time that any plant fruit extract was used for the synthesis of nanoparticles.