Biogenic Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles Using Fruit Extract of Ficus Carica and Study Its Antimicrobial Activity

Biogenic synthesis of metal nanoparticles is considered to be a cost effective and eco-friendly approach.  Here we have demonstrated biogenic synthesis of silver nanoparticles using Ficus Carica extract at room temperature.  Ficus Carica fruit extract can be used as reducing as well as capping agent without adding any external reducing agents. The rate of formation of silver nanoparticles was monitored by using UV- Visible spectroscopy by measuring the absorbance at 420 nm for different molar ratios of plant extract to silver nitrate concentrations. The resulting silver nanoparticles was isolated and characterized with various instrumental methods such as FT-IR, XRD and FE-SEM to study the size and shape of particles and functional group of the stabilizing agents. The particles sizes are found to be 20–25 nm ranges with face centered cubic crystal structure of Ag nanoparticles. The antimicrobial activity of silver nanoparticles synthesized by biogenic method was tested against gram negative and gram positive micro-organism. An enhanced antimicrobial activity was observed with silver nanoparticles synthesized from fruit extract when compared with silver nanoparticles synthesized EDTA method.