Efficient, Green and One Pot Synthesis of Sodium Acetate Functionalized Silver Nanoparticles and Their Potential Application as Food Preservative

Abstract

Silver nanoparticles have received a lot of attention in the past decade as efficient antimicrobial agents. However, their use as food preservatives is still limited. Keeping this in mind, in this study, we report the synthesis of silver nanoparticles by a cost effective and green approach using sodium acetate (a well-known low cost food preservative) as reducing/capping agent. The synthesized silver nanoparticles were thoroughly characterized using UV-Visible absorption spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, zeta potential, fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The morphology of the synthesized silver nanoparticles was found to be spherical in nature and the size was approximately 20 ± 2 nm as confirmed through TEM images. Further, in order to explore the potential application of sodium acetate capped silver nanoparticles as food preservatives, the antimicrobial activity of these nanoparticles was tested on different bacteria like Escherichia coli, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae. The results show that the synthesized nanoparticles are highly active on the listed bacterial strains even at very low concentrations, confirming their potential as efficient food preservatives.