Design of a bioprocess to produce silver nanoparticles

The development of reliable processes for the synthesis of silver nanomaterials is an important aspect of current nanotechnology research. In this work, silver nanoparticles were produced in a bioreactor by Escherichia coli (E. coli). For this purpose, a process was designed and silver nanoparticles at a scale larger than laboratorial scale were produced by considering optimum conditions and using E. coli. This research for the first time was carried out at a scale larger than laboratory scale indicating ability to produce nanoparticles at a large scale using microorganisms. In addition, UV-vis spectroscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), transitional electron microscopy (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) were employed to investigate characterisation of nanoparticles.