Physico-Mechanical and Antibacterial Properties of Pine Gum/Epoxy Composites with/without Silver Nanoparticles

Silver nanoparticles/polymer composite (Ag-NPs/PC) may eventually be biodegradable, sustainable, or burned without production of lethal by-products and can be utilized as packaging and biomedical device applications. Nanoparticles engaged in pine gum (resin and rosin) are preserved for months without any significant effect on particle size and distribution. This paper focuses on the pine gum/epoxy composites with and without silver nanoparticles fabricated by a hand lay-up technique. Silver nanoparticles are fixed at 0.37% and pine gum varies from 2 to 24% by weight to acquire the best mechanical and wear properties. The result indicates that Ag-NPs with pine gum (23.7 wt% resin &13.3 wt% rosin) has the best tensile and impact strength reaching a gain of 51.34% and 53.68% simultaneously. Hardness is noted most extreme 17.92% at Ag-NPs sample (7.4 wt% resin and 3.7 wt% rosin) and wear resist behavior is best noted with neat pine gum/epoxy composite. The antibacterial assay of the Ag-NPs is done against Escherichia coli and noted that the zone of inhibition is found to be 1.6 cm as compared to inhibition of 0.4 cm for pine gum reaching an advance of 75%. The various arrangements are enhanced and sited on the basis of TOPSIS technique.