Abstract
The antimicrobial bioactivity of silver nanoparticles is well known, and they can be used widely in many applications, becoming especially important in the biomedical industry. On the other hand, the electrospun nanofibers possess properties that can enhance silver nanoparticle applicability. However, silver nanoparticle bioactivity differs depending on the loading of silver ions into electrospun nanofibers. This review is aimed at comparing different silver incorporation methods into electrospun nanofibers and their antimicrobial activity, discussing each procedure’s limitations, and presenting the most promising one. This review showed that the preferred techniques for incorporating silver nanoparticles were direct blending and ultraviolet irradiation methods due to their simplicity and efficient results. Besides, polyacrylonitrile nanofibers (PAN) have been the most reported system loaded with silver nanoparticles. Finally, independently of the technique used, silver nanoparticle-loaded nanofibers show high antimicrobial activity in all cases.
Highlights
In the last decades, the interest of the biomedical industry in nanomaterials has increased due to its promising applications against different diseases
Bortolassi et al discussed that the bioactivity of the AgNPs depends on their capacity to attach to the microbial cell membrane’s surface, altering the permeability and cellular homeostatic, thereby AgNP distribution and availability over the surface of the fibers become crucial for the bioactivity
The loaded AgNP nanofibers fabricated by the direct addition of AgNPs into the polymeric solution decreased the antimicrobial efficiency of AgNPs due to their aggregation
Summary
The interest of the biomedical industry in nanomaterials has increased due to its promising applications against different diseases. In this sense, AgNPs are among the most studied nanomaterials principally due to their highly efficient antimicrobial properties [1,2,3,4,5,6]. It is known that AgNP efficiency increases using a carrier [4]. Electrospun nanofibers are ideal carriers for AgNPs since their small dimensions permit homogeneous distribution and avoid mass aggregation. The blend of technologies between nanofibers and nanoparticles maximizes both structure properties, making them an ideal amalgam for many applications.
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