IOSR Journal of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences (IOSR-JPBS)

Medical applications
One use of silver ion or metallic silver as well as silver nanoparticles can be exploited in medicine for
burn treatment, dental materials, coating stainless steel materials, water treatment, sunscreen lotions,
etc (Dura´n et al., 2007).

Catalysis applications
Nanocatalysis has recently been a rapidly growing field which involves the use of nanoparticles as
catalysts. It is well known that metals such as Au, Ag and Pt and metal ions can catalyzed the
decomposition of H2O2 to oxygen Merga et al. (2007). It was observed, when the Ag colloid was
injected, chemiluminescence emission from the luminal-H 2O2 system was greatly enhanced (Guo et
al., 2008). Silver is also the most popular catalyst for the oxidation of ethylene to ethylene

Table 1. Applications of silver nanoparticles in pharmaceutics, medicine and dentistry (Caro et al., 2010).

DOI: 10.9790/3008- g 1 | Page

IOSR Journal of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences (IOSR-JPBS)

oxide and methanol to formaldehyde as catalysts. It is well known that metals such as Au, Ag and Pt
and metal ions can catalyzed the decomposition of H 2O2 to oxygen. It was observed, when the Ag
colloid was injected, chemilumines- cence emission from the luminal-H 2O2 system was greatly
enhanced. Silver is also the most popular catalyst for the oxidation of ethylene to ethylene oxide and
methanol to formaldehyde (Guo et al., 2008). Silver nanoparticles immobilized on silica spheres have
been tested for their ability to catalyze the reduction of dyes by sodium borohydride (NaBH 4).
Catalysis of dyes was chosen as it is easy to detect a change in color when the dyes are reduced. In
the absence of silver nanoparticles, the sample was almost stationary showing very little or no
reduction of the dyes. Figure 4 shows how the absorbance spectrum of the dyes decreases when
the dyes are reduced (Jiang et al., 2005).

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