National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

We report the film deposition of Poly(D, L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) particle systems by matrix assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) technique. PLGA+polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), PLGA+PVA+ bovine serum albumin (BSA) and PLGA+PVA+chitosan (CH) nanoparticles were prepared by an oil-in-water emulsion-diffusion-evaporation method. The average diameter of PLGA particles was between 180-250 nm. The coatings were obtained by laser evaporation of frozen targets prepared by mixing appropriate PLGA aqueous suspensions and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) in three ratios. Depending on the DMSO content, we deposited PLGA particles embedded into polymeric layer mainly obtained due to the entirely or partially dissolving of nanoparticles into the initial solution. In vitro results showed that the distribution and morphology of osteoblast-like SaOs-2 cells on some PLGA particle coatings were similar with that of the positive control. The purpose of this study was to develop layers of PLGA particles for local controlled drug delivery.

In this paper we show that preparation of Ag doped hydroxyapatite by an adapted co-precipitation method at 100 C has several advantages over other techniques. Specifically, it can generate highly crystalline nanopowder Ag:HAp which could be used for implantable medical devices. The XRD of HAp (x(Ag) = 0) and Ag:HAp (x(Ag) = 0.05, and x(Ag) = 0.4) also demonstrates that powders obtained by co-precipitation at 100 C exhibit the apatite characteristics with good crystal structure and no new phase or impurity is found. The SEM results suggested that Ag+ doping had little influence on the morphology and dimension of the samples. It can be seen that all the samples consist of elipsoidal particles. The antibactericidal activity of Ag:HAp-NPs with x(Ag) = 0, x(Ag) = 0.05, and x(Ag) = 0.4 on Bacilus and E.coli ESBL 1576 were presented. The Ag:HAp-NPs with x(Ag) = 0.05, and x(Ag) = 0.4 inhibited the biofilm development both by the gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus 0364) and the gram-negative (Providencia stuartii 1116) strains. On the other hand, our studies have shown that Ag:HAp with x(Ag) = 0 had no antibacterial activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.

The aim of this study was the evaluation of (Ca10-x Ag-x)(PO4)(6) (OH)(2) nanoparticles (Ag:HAp-NPs) for their antibacterial and antifungal activity. Resistance to antimicrobial agents by pathogenic bacteria has emerged in the recent years as a major public health problem worldwide. In this paper, we report a comparison of the antimicrobial activity of low concentrations silver-doped hydroxyapatite nanoparticles. Thesilver-doped nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite powder was synthesized at 100 degrees C indeionised water. The as-prepared Ag: Hap nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), FT-IR, and FT-Raman spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies demonstrate that powders obtained by coprecipitation at 100 degrees C exhibit the apatite characteristics with good crystal structure, without any new phase or impurities found. FT-IR and FT-Raman spectroscopy revealed the presence of the various vibrational modes corresponding to phosphates and hydroxyl groups and the absence of any band characteristic to silver. The specific microbiological assays demonstrated that Ag: HAp-NPs exhibited antimicrobial features, but interacted differently with the Gram-positive, Gram-negative bacterial and fungal tested strains.

Zinc oxide particles were synthesized by a simple wet chemical method. Using zinc nitrate and various precipitating agents, like KOH, NaOH and (CH2)(6)N-4, particles with different morphologies were obtained. Also, the addition of a structure-directing agent, like gum arabic - a highly branched biopolymer, leads to a decrease in the ZnO particles size (for KOH and NaOH) and to a dramatical change of the ZnO particle shape in the case of (CH2)(6)N-4. The X-ray diffraction analysis showed that all obtained samples are of wurtzite structure. The reflectance and photoluminescence spectra have been used to investigate the optical properties of the ZnO structures. The morphologies observed by scanning electron microscopy reveal snowflake-like, flower-like, star-like and double-raspberry-like structures. A possible formation mechanism for ZnO micro/nanostructures with different morphologies was proposed. The biopolymer-assisted crystallization method could provide a facile approach to synthesize other desired compounds with controllable morphology.

The glycerol iron oxide nanoparticles (GIO-NPs) were obtained by an adapted coprecipitation method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies demonstrate that GIO-NPs were indexed into the spinel cubic lattice with a lattice parameter of 0.835 nm. The refinement of XRD spectra indicated that no other phases except maghemite were detected. The adsorption of glycerol on iron oxide nanoparticles was investigated by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. On the other hand, this work implicated the use of GIO-NPs in antibacterial studies. The results indicate that, in the case of P.aeruginosa 1397 biofilms, at concentrations from 0.01 mg/mL to 0.625 mg/mL, the glycerol iron oxide inhibits the ability of this strain to develop biofilms on the inert substratum.

Silver-doped hydroxyapatite (Ag:HAp) was obtained by coprecipitation method. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), infrared, and Raman analysis confirmed the development of Ag:HAp with good crystal structure. Transmission electron microscopy analysis showed an uniform ellipsoidal morphology with particles from 5 nm to 15 nm. The main vibrational bands characteristic to HAp were identified. The bands assigned to phosphate vibrational group were highlighted in infrared and Raman spectra. The most intense peak Raman spectrum is the narrow band observed at 960 cm(-1). In this article Ag:Hap-NPs were also evaluated for their antimicrobial activities against gram-positive, gram-negative, and fungal strains. The specific antimicrobial activity revealed by the qualitative assay demonstrates that our compounds are interacting differently with the microbial targets.

Single crystal ZnO nanowires grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) technique respectively, were in-situ and ex-situ covered with additional ZnO shell layers. Luminescence investigation revealed significant luminescence spectra shift from UV to blue emission band of the obtained structures while changing the deposited shell layer film thickness. But with no monotone variation with the deposited film thicknesses. While the luminescence changes are generally considered as being determined by the ratio between core emission lines intensity and shell 'defects' lines intensity, the strongest changes in the photoluminescence spectra were obtained in our experiments for the nanometer order shell layer thicknesses. The comparison between luminescence results and luminescence studies on 50 nm ZnO nanoparticles clusterization, together with HRTEM investigations of the ZnO shell layer suggest that the nanoparticle-nanowire interface, respectively the coupling between the ZnO single crystal core and ZnO nanostructured shell layer, might play a significant role in the luminescence spectra changes.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the biological properties of iron oxide nanoparticles (IO-NPs) obtained in the aqueous suspension. The iron oxide nanoparticles were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The biocompatibility of the iron oxide was demonstrated by the in vitro quantification of HeLa cells viability using propidium iodide (PI) and fluorescein diacetate (FdA) and the MTT colorimetric assay. The toxicity of small size iron oxide nanoparticles was also evaluated by means of histological examination on male Brown Norway rats after intraperitoneal injection. At the tested concentrations, the nanoparticles proved to be not cytotoxic on HeLa cells. The rat's behavior, as well as the histopathological aspect of liver, kidney, lung, and spleen tissues at 48 h after intraperitoneal injection did not present any modifications. The in vivo and in vitro assays suggested that the IO-NPs could be further used for developing new in vivo medical applications.

As synthesized mer-Alq(3) powder, obtained by wet chemical synthesis, has been subjected to different new characterization techniques such as Energy Dispersive X-ray, Cathodoluminescence and Scanning Electron Microscopy in order to identify their structural and photophysical properties. Other common techniques like X-ray diffraction, Raman and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy have been involved in order to prove the formation of mer-Alq(3) compound. The vibrational spectroscopic properties were interpreted by using the output files from Gaussian software with B3YLP functionals and 6-311(d) basic sets. The growth kinetic of mer-Alq(3) nanocrystals in the alpha-phase has been evaluated by using the finite-size effects based on the Raman position peaks and their linewidths, which confirms the semiconductor character of the mer-Alq(3) compound. The XRD results suggest that the isothermal annealing increases the mer-Alq(3) nanocrystals, which modify the regular shape of typical spectral parameters from Raman peaks. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The aim of this study was to obtain saccharide (dextran and sucrose)-coated maghemite nanoparticles with antibacterial activity. The polysaccharide-coated maghemite nanoparticles were synthesized by an adapted coprecipitation method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies demonstrate that the obtained polysaccharide-coated maghemite nanoparticles can be indexed into the spinel cubic lattice with a lattice parameter of 8.35 angstrom. The refinement of XRD spectra indicated that no other phases except the maghemite are detectable. The characterization of the polysaccharide-coated maghemite nanoparticles by various techniques is described. The antibacterial activity of these polysaccharide-coated maghemite nanoparticles (NPs) was tested against Pseudomonas aeruginosa 1397, Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212, Candida krusei 963, and Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and was found to be dependent on the polysaccharide type. The antibacterial activity of dextran-coated maghemite was significantly higher than that of sucrose-coated maghemite. The antibacterial studies showed the potential of dextran-coated iron oxide NPs to be used in a wide range of medical infections.