Biological prospective for synthesis of metal nanoparticles: a review

Nanoparticle research is currently an area of intense scientific interest, due to a wide variety of potential applications in biomedical, optical, and electronic fields. A nanoparticle (or nanopowder or nanocluster or nanocrystal) is a microscopic particle with at least one dimension less than 100 nm. Metallic nanoparticles have fascinated scientist for over a century and are now heavily utilized in biomedical sciences and engineering. Today these materials can be synthesized and modified with various chemical functional groups which allow them to be conjugated with antibodies, ligands, and drugs of interest and thus opening a wide range of potential applications in biotechnology such as targeted drug delivery and more importantly diagnostic imaging. The greater demand of nanoparticles has therefore led to the development of an eco-friendly method for the synthesis of nanoparticles using biological sources as a potential alternative to numerous chemical and physical methods.