Abstract
There is an increasing demand on synthesizing pharmaceuticals and biomaterials that possess antimicrobial and/or antiviral activities. In this respective silver nanoparticles are known for their excellent antimicrobial activity. Nevertheless, their uncontrolled release in a biological medium can induce a cytotoxic effect. For this, we explored the use of nanolayered metal phosphates based on titanium and zirconium as materials that can be enriched with silver nanoparticles. Employing the hydrothermal route, crystalline α-phases of zirconium and titanium phosphates (α-ZrP, α-TiP) were synthesized and there after surface-enriched with silver nanoparticles. The structural assessment confirmed the stability of the structures and their sizes are in the nanoscale at least in one dimension. The cytocompatibility assays confirmed the biocompatibility of the pristine phases and the antimicrobial assay confirmed that both silver-enriched nanolayered structures maintain an antibacterial effect at reasonably low concentrations.
Highlights
Following the golden era of antibiotics, the increasing awareness of the danger we face in the current era of antimicrobial resistance, has directed the researchers to investigate the possibility of synthesizing new combination of materials that could accomplish the required antimicrobial effects [1]
This procedure resulted in the formation of an amorphous phase of titanium phosphate, from which 1.5 g were mixed with 30 mL of 5 M H3 PO4 in Teflon-lined stainless-steel hydrothermal autoclave reactor (40 mL) that was heated at 180 ◦ C for 48 h
Powder XRD confirmed the successful synthesis of crystalline zirconium phosphate and titanium phosphate in their α-phases (Figure 1), for the latter, we applied a different preparation methodology than the mostly reported one to result in nanolayered crystalline structures with narrow size distribution
Summary
Following the golden era of antibiotics, the increasing awareness of the danger we face in the current era of antimicrobial resistance, has directed the researchers to investigate the possibility of synthesizing new combination of materials that could accomplish the required antimicrobial effects [1]. Zirconium phosphate has been under investigation since 1956 when its cation exchange properties were first reported [4] Since it was known as an amorphous phase until its first crystalline structure was reported in 1964 as Zr(HPO4 )2 ·H2 O (abbreviated as α-ZrP) [5]. Many studies were performed to develop new synthesis methods for ZrPmaterials and to explore its prospective applications, because of its outstanding chemical and physical properties [6,7,8]. Among these methods, the hydrothermal method has the advantage of resulting in highly crystalline layered α-ZrP structures with a narrow particle size distribution and controlled morphology [9]. The hydrothermal method has the advantage of resulting in highly crystalline layered α-ZrP structures with a narrow particle size distribution and controlled morphology [9]. α-ZrP has gained a considerable interest owing to the ease of controlling its structure and facile exfoliation into few or single-layered entities with all the consequent possibilities of enhancing its intercalation capacity and increasing tremendously its surface area to mass ratio [10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
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