Synthesis of Ag/BSA composite nanospheres from water-in-oil microemulsion using compressed CO2 as antisolvent

In this work, a novel route to synthesize biomolecule/metal composite nanospheres is proposed. This method combines the advantages that the silver nanoparticles and bovine serum albumin (BSA) can be precipitated simultaneously from water-in-oil microemulsion by the easy control of CO2 pressure, which was revealed by our high-pressure UV-VIS spectra. The Ag/BSA nanocomposites were successfully prepared using this method. The transmission electronic microscopy (TEM) if the obtained nanocomposites shows that the small-sized Ag nanaoparticles are immobilized by the BSA nanospheres, and the phase structure was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The Ag/BSA nanocomposites show absorption properties at a wavelength around 435 nm.