BIOSYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GOLD NANOPARTICLES USING THE ALGA Kappaphycus alvarezii
Abstract
As a part of our ongoing investigation into the use of algae for gold nanoparticle synthesis, we screened the marine alga Kappaphycus alvarezii, to investigate its efficiency to reduce gold ions as well as the formation of gold nanoparticles. In the present work, we report the reaction condition of the alga K. alvarezii with aqueous gold ions for gold nanoparticle synthesis within the biomass extracellularly. The formation of gold nanoparticles was characterized by UV–Vis spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. Moreover, we have found that the reaction of gold ions with the K. alvarezii biomass under stationary conditions results in the rapid extracellular formation of gold nanoparticles of spherical morphology. The gold nanoparticles are not toxic to the cells that continued to grow after the biosynthesis of the gold nanoparticles.
