Abstract

BIOLOGICAL GREENISH NANOSYNTHESIS OF SILVER NANOPARTICLE USING PLANT LEAF ESSENTIAL OIL COMPOUND FARNESOL AND THEIR ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY AGAINST HUMAN PATHOGENIC FUNGI

R. R. Thanighaiarassu, Balwin Nambikkairaj, R. Devika, D. Raghunathan, N. Manivannan, P. Sivamani*

ABSTRACT

Plant oil compounds could be an alternative to traditional biological methods for the production of metallic nanomaterials in a clean, nontoxic and ecologically sound manner. In the present study, we aimed to develop a rapid ecofriendly method for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles with plant oil compound farnesol. The bioactive constitutes of these plant oil compound farnesol seems to play a role in the production of metal nanoparticles. Moreover, rapid biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles occurred only at alkaline media. The production of nanoparticles by this method is extremely fast, ecofriendly and stable for several weeks with no additional surfactants. The silver nanoparticles were synthesized by five different methods and the completion of the reaction was monitored with UV-visible spectrophotometer. The XRD result showed the powdery nature of nanoparticles, SEM-EDX analysis was employed for the characterization of synthesized silver nanoparticles was small dot shaped structure. The particle size was found to be 58 nm, possessing spherical shape as confirmed from TEM analysis and the FTIR result predicted the presence of chemical compounds in this oil compound The antifungal activity results showed that synthesized silver nanoparticle from the plant oil compound farnesol was moderately active against clinically isolated human fungal pathogens, Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus, Candida albicans, Candida tropicalis and Candida kefyr.

Keywords: Candida kefyr, Green synthesis, XRD, silver nanoparticles, SEM-EDX.