**8. References**


An anti-microbial finish for textiles involving skin contact will need additional safety data concerning this aspect. For manufacturers with biocides with relatively low volumes the cost of generating the necessary data may make ongoing production uneconomical. Acute toxicity data is relatively cheap to generate but sub-acute and other long-term studies are very expensive. It is therefore likely that the number of biocides being produced in the future will diminish and bringing new products to market will be even more expensive. A possible future development would be the micro-encapsulation of biocides. The potential is considerable if the correct performance and economics can be achieved. Benefits could include better durability and greater safety. The search for more cost-effective testing

Overall the need for anti-microbial and hygiene finishes looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. Improving performance and cost-effectiveness, while meeting environmental and toxicity requirements, will continue to challenge those working in this

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**7. The future** 

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**20** 

*India* 

**Silver Nanoparticles:** 

**Real Antibacterial Bullets** 

G. Thirumurugan and M. D. Dhanaraju

*Research Lab, GIET School of Pharmacy, Chaitanya Nagar, Rajahmundry, AP* 

One of the first and most natural questions to ask when starting to deal with nanoparticles is: "why are nanoparticles so interesting"? Why even bother to work with these extremely small structures when handling and synthesis is much more complicated than that of their macroscopic counterparts. The answer lies in the nature of and unique properties possessed by nanostructures. Nanoparticles possess a very high surface to volume ratio. This can be utilized in areas where high surface areas are critical for success. Over the past few decades, Metal nanoparticles, whose structures exhibit significantly novel and distinct physical, chemical, and biological properties, and functionality due to their nanoscale size, have elicited much interest. Especially in biological and pharmaceutical sector nanostructure materials are attracting a great deal of attention because of their potential for achieving specific processes and selectivity. Decreasing the dimension of nanoparticles has pronounced effect on the physical properties that significantly differ from the bulk material. Moreover, there are several reasons for the use of silver nanoparticles in nanotechnology as well as in medical and pharmaceutical field. (i) First of all, silver compounds have been used in medicine throughout the history of civilization. (Patra, 2008; Klasen, 2000; Lansdown, 2002) (ii) It is easy to synthesize silver nanoparticles by several simple, economically cheap, safe and reliable methods such as wet chemical, physical and biological; (iii) it can be synthesized from sizes of 2–500 nm by changing the reaction parameters; (iv) it can be easily synthesized with different shapes (spheres, rods, tubes, wires, ribbons, plate, cubic, hexagonal, triangular) using templates and changing reaction conditions; (v) due to the presence of a negative charge on the surface, they are highly reactive, which helps to modify the surface of silver nanoparticles using several biomolecules. Due to the strong interaction between the metal surface and thiol/amine containing molecules (organic molecules, DNA, protein, enzyme etc.) the surface of SNPs can be easily modified; (Bhattacharya, 2007) (vi) SNPs can be easily characterized due to the presence of the characteristic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) bands; (Daniel and Astruc, 2004) due to the presence of a unique optical as well as electronic behavior, these metal particles can be used in biosensors and molecular imaging; (Oghabian, 2010) due to its strong antimicrobial activity, it has found variety of

**1. Introduction** 

application in different fields (Fig. 1).

