Chapter 6 - Plant mediated green synthesis of metallic nanoparticles: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

For the past few decades, colloidal metallic nanoparticles (MNPs) and their attractive and unusual solution properties have led to the development of a range of useful applications, especially in the biotechnology and nanotechnology fields. Generally, there are three important methods, chemical, physical, and biological, respectively, employed for the synthesis of MNPs. Synthesized nanoparticles are very small and particles may lead to considerable changes in the physical and chemical properties. However, recently, all over the world, researchers have given emphasis to the synthesis of MNPs by green chemistry methods because of its natural reducing, capping and stabilization with particular sizes and morphology. Generally, this chapter focuses on the synthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles by different types of biological methods without the use of any toxic or chemical materials, instead of employing any other methods. MNPs are important for effective drug delivery system or drug therapy due to their distinctive chemical and physical properties with strong binding attraction for carboxylic acid aptamers, proteins, thiols, and disulfides. Therefore, MNPs have been used widely in the field of biosciences for cancer therapy. Furthermore, it is clear that the green synthesis method is safe, easy for large-scale industrial production of nanoparticles.