Gainful utilization of the highly intransigent weed ipomoea in the synthesis of gold nanoparticles

The paper presents a new method for the biomimetic synthesis of gold nanoparticles (GNPs), in which a highly invasive and harmful weed Ipomoea carnea has been employed for the first time as the main bioagent. Extracts of all the three basic components of the plant – leaves, stem and root – were explored and were found to be suitable in effecting the GNP synthesis. The electron micrographs of the synthesized GNPs revealed the presence of particles of monodispersed spherical and polydispersed triangular, hexagonal, polygonal, rod, and truncated triangular shapes in sizes ranging 3–40 and 10–100 nm, respectively. The presence of gold atoms was confirmed from the EDAX and X-ray diffraction studies. The FT-IR spectral study indicated that the polysaccharides and proteins in the plant extract could have been responsible for the reduction of gold ions to GNPs and the latter’s stabilization.