Physico-Chemical Condition Optimization during Biosynthesis lead to development of Improved and Catalytically Efficient Gold Nano Particles

Biosynthesis of nanoparticles has gained great attention in making the process cost-effective and eco-friendly, but there are limited reports which describe the interdependency of physical parameters for tailoring the dimension and geometry of nanoparticles during biological synthesis. In the present study, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) of various shapes and sizes were obtained by modulating different physical parameters using Trichoderma viride filtrate. The particles were characterized on the basis of visual observation, dynamic light scattering, UV-visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X ray diffraction. While the size varied from 2–500 nm, the shapes obtained were nanospheres, nanotriangles, nanopentagons, nanohexagons, and nanosheets. Changing the parameters such as pH, temperature, time, substrate, and culture filtrate concentration influenced the size and geometry of nanoparticles. Catalytic activity of the biosynthesized GNP was evaluated by UV-visible spectroscopy and confirmed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometric analysis for the conversion of 4-nitrophenol into 4-aminophenol which was strongly influenced by their structure and dimension. Common practices for biodegradation are traditional, expensive, require large amount of raw material, and time taking. Controlling shapes and sizes of nanoparticles could revolutionize the process of biodegradation that can remove all the hurdles in current scenario.