BIOSYNTHESIS OF NANOPARTICLES BY CELL-FREE EXTRACT OF Bacillus subtilis

There is an increasing commercial demand for nanoparticles due to their wide applicability in various areas such as electronics, catalysis, chemistry, energy and medicine. Metallic nanoparticles are traditionally synthesized by wet chemical techniques, where the chemicals used are quite often toxic and flammable. In this paper, we describe a novel combinatorial synthesis approach which is rapid, simple and green for the synthesis of metallic nanostructures of noble metals such as silver (Ag), by using a combination of culture supernatanant of Bacillus subtilis and microwave (MW) irradiation in water. It was found that exposure of culture supernatanant of Bacillus subtilis and microwave irradiation to silver ion lead to the formation of silver nanoparticles. The formation of nanoparticles by this method is extremely rapid and requires no toxic chemicals.