Yeast Cell Route: A Green and Facile Strategy for Biosynthesis of Carbonate Nanoparticles

Nanoparticles are produced by chemical methods which are usually environmentally hazardous because of the use of various perilous chemicals and harsh reaction conditions. Bio-mediated synthesis using microbes has been proved to be a promising substitute for traditional methods to synthesize nanoparticles. Herein, based on the principles of biomimetic mineralization, a bio-mediated strategy was proposed to synthesize biocompatible barium carbonate nanoparticles (nBaCO3) in living yeast cells according to the intracellular biochemical reactions using tactfully the interaction of endogenous CO32− and exogenous Ba2+ under normal growth conditions of the yeast cells. The intracellular nBaCO3 are well-dispersed and the diameter of the nanoparticles is successfully controlled at about 5 nm under mild conditions. The bio-mediated strategy to obtain nanomaterials can be universally applied to biosynthesize other kinds of components with good biocompatibility. This biosynthesis route for barium carbonate nanoparticles mediated by the cells not only presents a green and facile design to synthesize well-tailored nanomaterials using a biomineralization-inspired strategy but may also lead to new insights for nanotechnology.