Synthesis of silver nanoparticles using hydroxyl functionalized ionic liquids and their antimicrobial activity

We report a new one phase method for the synthesis of uniform monodisperse crystalline Ag nanoparticles in aqueous systems that has been developed by using newly synthesized mono and dihydroxylated ionic liquids and cationic surfactants based on 1,3-disubstituted imidazolium cations and halogens anions. The hydroxyl functionalized ionic liquids (HFILs) and hydroxyl functionalized cationic surfactants (HFCSs) also simultaneously acts both as the reductant and protective agent. By changing the carbon chain length, alcohol structure and anion of the 1,3-imidazolium based HFILs and HFCSs the particle size, uniform and dispersibility of nanoparticles in aqueous solvents could be controlled. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction, UV-Vis and NMR, were used for characterization of HFILs, HFCSs and silver nanoparticles. TEM studies on the solution showed representative spherical silver nanoparticles with average sizes 2-8 nm, particularly 2.2 nm and 4.5 nm in size range and reasonable narrow particle size distributions (SD-standard distribution) 0.2 nm and 0.5 nm respectively. The all metal nanoparticles are single crystals with face centered cubic (fcc) structure. The silver nanoparticles surface of plasmon resonance band (lambda(max)) around 420 nm broadened and little moved to the long wavelength region that indicating the formation of silver nanoparticles dispersion with broad absorption around infrared (IR) region. Silver complexes of these HFILs as well as different silver nanoparticles dispersions have been tested in vitro against several gram positive and gram negative bacteria and fungus. The silver nanoparticles providing environmentally friendly and high antimicrobial activity agents.