Living Plant-Mediated Synthesis of Nanoparticles

Techniques to fabricate nanostructured materials are in constant development. These techniques initiated with physical and chemical approaches and now are developed to biosynthesis and green synthesis techniques. Nowadays, bioactive compounds from microbial cells and plant extracts are hugely tested and employed for the green synthesis of nanoparticles. Similar to microbial cells that can produce intracellular nanostructures, some plants can synthesize and maintain nanostructures in their tissue. The evidence of these finding is the phytomining technology. Now it is known that various parameters such as soil pH, geographical area, and ionic precursor can influence the process of in situ fabrication of nanoparticles. Plant metabolites such as terpenoids, polyphenols, reducing sugars, alkaloids, phenolic acids, and proteins play a major role in the reduction of metal ions as well as stabilization of the produced nanoparticles. These in situ synthesized nanoparticles can be extracted and purified via ashing techniques.