Enhanced Antibacterial and Food Simulant Activities of Silver Nanoparticles/Polypropylene Nanocomposite Films

• Published in: Langmuir Vol. 34; no. 48; pp. 14537 - 14545
• Main Authors: Cao, Guozhou, Lin, Han, Kannan, Palanisamy, Wang, Chun, Zhong, Yingying, Huang, Youju, Guo, Zhiyong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 04.12.2018
• Subjects: Anti-Bacterial Agents - chemistry; Anti-Bacterial Agents - pharmacology; antibacterial properties; atomic absorption spectrometry; bacteria; crystallization; Escherichia coli; Escherichia coli - drug effects; Food; Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy; industrial applications; ions; melting; Metal Nanoparticles - chemistry; mixing; nanocomposites; Nanocomposites - chemistry; nanosilver; Phase Transition; polypropylenes; Polypropylenes - chemistry; silver; Silver - chemistry; Silver - pharmacology; Staphylococcus aureus; Staphylococcus aureus - drug effects; Temperature; thermal degradation; thermogravimetry; toxicity; transmission electron microscopy; ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy
• ISSN: 0743-7463; 1520-5827; 1520-5827
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b03061

In this work, we synthesize dodecyl mercaptan-functionalized silver nanoparticles integrated with polypropylene nanocomposite (DM-AgNPs/PP) substrates by a simple in situ melt blending method. The formation and distribution of AgNPs are confirmed by UV–visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The existence of DM-AgNPs in PP film substrate enhances the thermal degradation and crystallization properties. Further, the antimicrobial activity of as-synthesized DM-AgNPs/PP film substrate is studied using Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria as model microbes, which displayed significantly enhanced bacteriostatic activities under optimized composition and experimental conditions. Interestingly, PP substrate with 0.4% DM-AgNPs exhibits drastically improved antibacterial property via the release of oxygen reactive species and Ag ion diffusion processes; thus, the inhibition rates of E. coli and S. aureus are obtained as 100 and 84.6%, respectively, which is higher than the conventional AgNPs. Finally, we demonstrate the migration study of Ag ions from the DM-AgNPs/PP film using different food simulant solutions by inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry analysis and the dissolved Ag ion content is estimated, which is a key prospect for the toxicity analysis. The overall Ag ion migration value is estimated between 1.8 and 24.5 μg/cm2 and displayed a lowest limit of Ag ion migration as 0.36 μg/cm2. Our work highlights the development of high performance nanocomposites as promising antibacterial and food simulant materials for biomedical and industrial applications.