Silver nanoparticles and its potential applications: A review

Silver nanoparticles have gained major interest because of their wide potential applications. Silver nanoparticles cause less toxicity to human health but, highly toxic to microorganisms. Due to this, silver nanoparticles have found good applications in biomedical, antimicrobial, catalysis, human health and environmental remediation etc. Silver nanoparticles are extensively used for biomedical applications due to the antimicrobials, bio-detection and labelling, bio-magnetic separations, drug delivery, imaging, bone cement, therapeutics etc. Silver nanoparticles as a result of their excellent optical and electronic properties are promising catalytic materials for various applications. Some applications are in automotive catalyst, membranes, fuel cells, photocatalysts, propellants, scratch-resistant coatings, structural ceramics and solar cells, organic dyes degradation and chemo-catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP). Silver nanoparticles also have applications in protection of human health. They are used in sun protection lotions, lipsticks, skin creams, UV protection ointment and creams and toothpaste in the cosmetics industry. The applications of silver nanoparticles can also be exploited in the environmental bioremediation. Silver nanoparticles are found to be very effective in air disinfection, water disinfection, surface disinfection etc. This makes it very useful in environmental treatment. Thus silver nanoparticles can be considered as good for having wide range of applications for the human benefits. This review article covers all the applications of silver nanoparticles which are found to be very essential in research activities, bioremediation, and very effective in making the human life good, easy and safe.