Controlled assembly of nanosilver particles inside bacterial cell scaffold

We present a straightforward technique to fabricate helical particles embedded with nanosilver particles aggregation using Spirulina platensis as scaffold, during which the nanosilver particles were controllably synthesized inside the biotemplate by the electroless deposition technique. The TEM of the as-prepared micro particles showed that nanosilver particles were universally distributed inside the biotemplate. The size of the intracellular nanosilver particles can be adjusted by controlling the reaction time. Helical particles prepared using this method are stable in deionized water. The intracellular synthesis mechanism of silver nanoparticles was analyzed. This technique can be generalized to other microorganism templates and different deposition materials that can be synthesized by electroless deposition technique. And the achieved highly-ordered nano particle aggregations have promising applications in various fields, such as nanocatalyst, wastewater treatment, biomedicine and anti-microbial materials.