A Systematic Study on Phyto-Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles and their Antimicrobial Mode of Action

Abstract

538Nanotechnology in past few decades witnessed tremendous advancement in terms of its application and still continues to charm the scientific community. The unique physicochemical properties exhibited by metallic nanoparticles enable them to engender new hopes in terms of improving different aspects of human life. Silver nanoparticles, amongst other noble metallic nanoparticles, have gained enormous attention in different fields starting from material science and technology, engineering to nanomedicine and nanobiotechnology. The serious threat to the contemporary world is the development of drug resistance in microbial strains rendering them unstoppable. Therefore, development of a drug which could mitigate this threat from the face of the earth is the need of the hour. Owing to its nobility and other unique properties (petite size, high surface area, stability, etc.), silver nanoparticle in recent years has enormously attracted the scientific community to overcome the aforementioned threats. Silver nanoparticles synthesis via conventional routes, chemical reduction, for instance has raised human health and environmental safety concerns and to mitigate these issues green synthetic approaches have come into picture. Amongst different green synthetic approaches, plant extract mediated synthesis serves the purpose of being an inexpensive, facile, clean and environmentally benign technique to its best. The phytochemicals present in plant extract assist in silver salt reduction to give away silver nanoparticles and also provide stability by acting as capping agent. Albeit, this approach is advantageous in several ways, however not completely devoid of shortcomings like difficulty to control dispersity of nanoparticles, control over the composition of plant extract in terms of phytochemical concentration, and so forth. Herein, we explore the vast plant diversity that has been utilized for the rapid and facile synthesis of silver nanoparticle giving an insight into the mechanism behind its synthesis and its probable antimicrobial mode of action.