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Photoinduced Silver Nanoparticles/Nanorings on Plasmid DNA Scaffolds
Author(s) -
Liu Jianhua,
Zhang Xiaoliang,
Yu Mei,
Li Songmei,
Zhang Jindan
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
small
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.785
H-Index - 236
eISSN - 1613-6829
pISSN - 1613-6810
DOI - 10.1002/smll.201101423
Subject(s) - nanotechnology , materials science , nanoparticle , plasmid , dna , silver nanoparticle , chemistry , biochemistry
Abstract Biological scaffolds are being actively explored for the synthesis of nanomaterials with novel structures and unexpected properties. Toroidal plasmid DNA separated from the Bacillus host is applied as a sacrificial mold for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles and nanorings. The photoirradiation method is applied to reduce Ag I on the plasmid. The nanoparticles are obtained by varying the concentration of the Ag I ion solution and the exposure time of the plasmid–Ag I complex under UV light at 254 nm and room temperature. It is found that the plasmid serves not only as a template but also as a reductant to drive the silver nucleation and deposition. The resulting nanoparticles have a face‐centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure and 20–30 nm average diameter. The detailed mechanism is discussed, and other metals or alloys could also be synthesized with this method.