The room temperature electron reduction for the preparation of silver nanoparticles on cotton with high antimicrobial activity

Functionalization of cotton by fabricating Ag nanoparticles (NPs) on cotton surface has aroused great interest for its promising applications for chemical, electronic, photonic and many other devices. Herein, a simple and rapid room temperature electron reduction, which uses argon glow discharge as the electron source, was employed to fabricate Ag NPs on cotton without using any chemical reducing agent. The color of Ag NP loaded cotton changes from light yellow to black upon the increasing Ag loading amount, while the average size of Ag NPs on the cotton barely changes from 4.4 to 6.3 nm. This indicates the color change is due to the size of Ag aggregates rather than the size of single Ag NP, as demonstrated by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and UV-vis absorption analyses. The functionalized fabric exhibits high antimicrobial activity against both Gram-negative bacterium E. coli and Gram-positive bacterium B. subtilis.