Sodium alginate stabilized silver nanoparticles-silica nanohybrid and their antibacterial characteristics

•Silver nanoparticles were synthesized using sodium alginate.•Sodium alginate act as reducing and stabilizing agent.•Na-Alg-s-AgNPs@SiO2 nanohybrid prepared by sol-gel method.•Nanohybrid exhibited promising broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity.•Nanohybrid may be used effectively in long-term antimicrobial applications.

Due to the problem of resistance of many infectious agents to the usual treatments, this study addresses the ways of obtaining and using new sodium alginate stabilized-silver/mesoporous silica (Na-Alg-s-AgNPs@SiO2) nanohybrid as antimicrobial agents. Capping AgNPs with a shell of mesoporous SiO2 is a system to build the increase biocompatibility of AgNPs. In this work, we report a simple and green way to deal with setting up a uniform sodium alginate-stabilized silver nanoparticles embedded mesoporous silica (Na-Alg-s-AgNPs@SiO2 nanohybrid). The synthesized nanocomposite was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectra, which exhibited that AgNPs with average of size of ∼7 nm were consistently and compactly deposited in the nanocomposite. The nanohybrid demonstrated excellent antibacterial activity against both Gram negative (−ve) and Gram positive (+ve) bacteria. Thus, the developed Na-Alg-s-AgNPs@SiO2 nanohybrid has a potential to be used for various antibacterial applications in biotechnology and biomedical fields.

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