Chemical synthesis and antibacterial activity of novel-shaped silver nanoparticles

Silver nanoparticles are useful for medical applications due to their strong antibacterial activity. The antibacterial activity can be tuned by controlling the size and shape of the prepared silver nanoparticles. In this work, silver nanoparticles with different sizes and shapes were synthesized by solution phase routes, and their interactions with Escherichia coli were studied. Triangular silver nanoprisms were prepared by the reduction of silver nitrate at room temperature in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone, sodium citrate, hydrogen peroxide and sodium borohydride. Spherical silver nanoparticles were also prepared using silver nitrate as metal precursor and sodium citrate as well as sodium borohydride as reducing agents. The morphologies and structures of the nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results indicated that spherical silver nanoparticles were obtained with different average sizes of 4, 21 and 40 nm, respectively. The edged silver nanoprisms containing mainly {111} lattice planes were obtained in the range size of 25 to 400 nm. The antibacterial study revealed that the edged triangular silver nanoprisms with {111} lattice planes exhibited the strongest antibacterial property, compared with spherical nanoparticles. Our study demonstrated that triangular silver nanoprisms with sharp edges also display a good antibacterial activity in comparison to other shaped nanoparticles.