Nanostructured materials have attracted
widespread interests in past decades due to the significant
size-dependent changes in their physical and chemical
properties. Numerous applications have been applied in
optical and electrical areas, including nano-electronics,
photonic crystals, sensors based on surface enhanced Raman
scattering (SERS), and near-field microscopy. However,
knowledge in biological and pharmaceutical properties
of these nanostructured materials is still limited to
date.
The preparation of uniform nanosized drug particles with
specific requirements in terms of size, shape, and physical
and chemical properties is of great interest in the formula-tion
of new pharmaceutical products. Resistance of bacteria
to bactericides and antibiotics has increased in recent
years due to the development of resistant strains. Some
antimicrobial agents are extremely irritant and toxic
and there is much interest in finding ways to formulate
new types of safe and cost-effective biocidal materials.
The work described in this presentation starts with the
synthesis and characterizations of nanoscale silver particles
via wet chemistry method. Some of the preliminary results
on anti-microbial test against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus
aureus were also provided. These results support that
silver nanoparticles work quite well on Gram-negative
bacteria (Escherichia coli), while the Gram-positive bacteria
(Staphylococcus aureus) showed up much robust against
silver nanoparticles. The physical and biological mechanisms
are still under study.
