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Enhanced antimicrobial activity with faceted silver nanostructures

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Abstract

Faceted silver nanostructures including triangular nanoprisms, nanotetrahedra, and nanodecahedra were synthesized via a facile photochemical method at controlled wavelengths using spherical nanoparticles as the seeds. Scanning transmission electron microscopy studies showed that the resulting nanostructures were much larger in size (20–50 nm) than the spherical seed nanoparticles (under 5 nm), and X-ray diffraction as well as high-resolution transmission electron microscopy measurements confirmed that these nanostructures exhibited predominantly {111} faceted surfaces. Importantly, the silver nanostructures demonstrated markedly better antimicrobial activity than the spherical seed nanoparticles as evidenced by a lower minimum inhibitory concentration and more dramatic changes in both growth rate and lag phase at lower concentrations, which were attributed to the greater reactivity of the {111} faceted surfaces toward oxygen-rich bacterial surface moieties that allowed for more rapid localization to bacterial cells and increased interactions with structurally vital outer-membrane proteins. These results highlight the significance of surface morphologies of metal nanostructures in the manipulation of their antimicrobial activity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (CHE-1012258, CHE-1265635 and DMR-1409396). TEM work was carried out at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as part of a user project. The PXRD data in this work were recorded on a Rigaku SmartLab instrument supported by the NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program under Grant DMR-1126845.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Santa Cruz, California, 95064, USA

    Mauricio Rojas-Andrade, Adam T. Cho, Peiguang Hu, Shannon J. Lee, Christopher P. Deming, Samantha W. Sweeney & Shaowei Chen

  2. Department of Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology, University of California Santa Cruz, California, 95064, USA

    Chad Saltikov

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  1. Mauricio Rojas-Andrade
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  2. Adam T. Cho
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  3. Peiguang Hu
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Correspondence to Chad Saltikov or Shaowei Chen.

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10853_2015_8847_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Electronic Supplementary Information. Shape distribution of faceted silver nanostructures, representative high-resolution TEM image of a silver nanoprism, and summary of antimicrobial activity of seed nanoparticles and faceted nanostructures. (PDF 618 kb)

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Rojas-Andrade, M., Cho, A.T., Hu, P. et al. Enhanced antimicrobial activity with faceted silver nanostructures. J Mater Sci 50, 2849–2858 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-8847-x

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