Abstract
Gold nanoparticles have enormous applications in cancer treatment, drug delivery and nanobiosensor due to their biocompatibility. Biological route of synthesis of metal nanoparticles are cost effective and eco-friendly. Acinetobacter sp. SW 30 isolated from activated sewage sludge produced cell bound as well as intracellular gold nanoparticles when challenged with HAuCl4 salt solution. We first time report the optimization of various physiological parameters such as age of culture, cell density and physicochemical parameters viz HAuCl4 concentration, temperature and pH which influence the synthesis of gold nanoparticles. Gold nanoparticles thus produced were characterized by various analytical techniques viz. UV-Visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, cyclic voltammetry, transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, environmental scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy and dynamic light scattering. Polyhedral gold nanoparticles of size 20 +/- A 10 nm were synthesized by 24 h grown culture of cell density 2.4 x 10(9) cfu/ml at 50 A degrees C and pH 9 in 0.5 mM HAuCl4. It was found that most of the gold nanoparticles were released into solution from bacterial cell surface of Acinetobacter sp. at pH 9 and 50 A degrees C.