Discipline of Biosciences & Biomedical Engineering

Plant mediated synthesis of metallic nanoparticles for biomedical applications

Metallic nanoparticles are one of the most widely used nanomaterials that are now being used for biomedical applications like diagnostics, pharmaceutics, biosensing, and therapeutics. These nanomaterials could be synthesized using various well-established physical and chemical techniques. However, the biogenic single-step synthesis of metallic nanoparticles, using green chemistry-based approaches have received increasing attention. Due to their potential applications in the field of biomedicine efforts are continuously being made towards the green synthesis of the metallic nanomaterials for medical applications. The green approach that utilizes plants for the fabrication process eliminates the use of any toxic reagent or the generation of hazardous byproducts during the synthesis process. We have demonstrated the bioreductive synthesis of metallic nanoparticles using plant extract. Our results show that the green synthesized metallic nanoparticles are biocompatible thus safe for cells. These green metallic nanoparticles exhibit excellent efficiency towards the plasmonic sensing, photoacoustic, and photothermal applications.

Prashant Kharey et al 2019 Nanotechnology in press https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6528/ab56b6