Effect of silver nanoparticles morphologies on antimicrobial properties of cotton fabrics

The aim of this study is to check the effect of different morphologies of silver nanoparticles such as spherical, polygonal, disk, prism, and hierarchical on antimicrobial characteristics of cotton fabrics. Nanosilver particles have been synthesized in different morphologies. Then, the colloid nanosilver particles were applied to the cotton fabric pieces for 25ppm by ultrasonic method in ambient temperature. Silver nanoparticles solutions were characterized by UV-visible and infrared absorption spectroscopies, scanning and transmission electron microscopies as well as antimicrobial tests which ultimately showed that non-spherical morphologies such as polygonal, prism, and hierarchical like shapes in comparison with spherical and disc morphologies exhibited stronger growth inhibitory effect against gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli and gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus after five replicate standard washing processes. In addition, among various tested morphologies, the hierarchical like morphology showed a very well antimicrobial activity over 91% after five washing cycle.