Oxidative dissolution of silver nanoparticles

AgNPs have potentially vast applications within the fields of medicine, science, and food and drug industries due to their antimicrobial properties, low cytotoxicity in humans, and inexpensive cost.

[1] It has been thought AgNP efficacy can mainly be attributed to shape, as nanoprisms and naorods have proven more active than nanospheres because they possess more highly exposed facets, thus leading to a faster release of Ag+ ions.

Oxidative dissolution of AgNPs has been shown to be a first order reaction with respect to both silver and hydrogen peroxide and is independent of particle size.

[10][14][15][16][17] Through their oxidative dissolution in biological systems, AgNPs can target important biomolecules such as “DNA, peptides, and cofactors” as well as absorb into nonspecific moieties and simultaneously disrupt several metabolic pathways.

[10] The combination of silver ions’ reaction with biomolecules with oxidative stress, ultimately leads to toxicity in biological environment.

Oxidative dissolution of AgNPs is attenuated in biological systems by components found in the cytosol, such as cysteine and glucose.
One method of generation of AgNPs is the reduction of the raw material, silver nitrate, to elemental silver using a reducing agent such as trisodium citrate.
Oxidative dissolution of AgNPs leads to antimicrobial conditions. Ag+ destroys several metabolic mechanisms of bacteria, as it: binds to bases in the DNA, preventing cell replication, denatures ribosomes thereby preventing protein synthesis, lyses the bacterial cell membrane, and destroys bacterial peptidoglycan walls.