Jose Ruben Morones et al 2005 Nanotechnology 16 2346 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/16/10/059
Jose Ruben Morones1, Jose Luis Elechiguerra1, Alejandra Camacho2, Katherine Holt3, Juan B Kouri4, Jose Tapia Ramírez5 and Miguel Jose Yacaman1,2
Show affiliationsNanotechnology is expected to open new avenues to fight and prevent disease using atomic scale tailoring of materials. Among the most promising nanomaterials with antibacterial properties are metallic nanoparticles, which exhibit increased chemical activity due to their large surface to volume ratios and crystallographic surface structure. The study of bactericidal nanomaterials is particularly timely considering the recent increase of new resistant strains of bacteria to the most potent antibiotics. This has promoted research in the well known activity of silver ions and silver-based compounds, including silver nanoparticles. The present work studies the effect of silver nanoparticles in the range of 1–100 nm on Gram-negative bacteria using high angle annular dark field (HAADF) scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Our results indicate that the bactericidal properties of the nanoparticles are size dependent, since the only nanoparticles that present a direct interaction with the bacteria preferentially have a diameter of ~1–10 nm.
87.85.Qr Nanotechnologies-design
Issue 10 (October 2005)
Received 21 June 2005, in final form 13 July 2005
Published 26 August 2005
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