Abstract
The development of reliable antibiotics in the fight against multidrug resistant bacteria is a crucial challenge nowadays. Here, we describe a green chemistry approach for the synthesis of antimicrobial silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) employing the leaf extract of the orchid Anoectochilus elatus. Synthesized Ag NPs were studied by UV-visible and ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy, as well as by XRD, SEM and TEM. The UV-Visible spectra of AgNPs exhibited a surface plasmon resonance peak at 420 nm. XRD analysis showed that peaks at 38.09A degrees, 44.59A degrees, 64.67A degrees and 77.54A degrees confirmed the crystalline nature of AgNPs. TEM revealed spherical shapes with an average particle size of 20 nm. Synthesized AgNPs were screened to evaluate their antimicrobial activity against five Gram-negative and two Gram-positive human bacterial pathogens. AgNPs showed effective antibacterial activity against all tested bacterial strains at the concentration of 30-50 mu L. Furthermore, the bactericidal efficacy of AgNPs can be useful to develop new eco-friendly antibacterial products to be used for photocatalytic, textile fabric applications, as well as to co-formulate detergents.