A review on zinc and zinc oxide nanoparticles; biosynthesis, characterization and applications.

Abstract

Nanoparticles are particles of very small size from 1nm to 1000nm but of great importance. Zinc oxide nanoparticles are widely applied in various fields such as medicine, food packing, cosmetics, sun screening lotions and many others due to their properties. ZnO-NPs show excellent antibacterial properties because of its high surface area as a result of their small particle size and therefore high surface activity. Zinc Oxide is highly bio-safe with photo-oxidizing and photocatalysis effect on several biological species. A number of infections and diseases caused by several bacteria have for long become hard to cure because of resistance of the pathogens to drugs and therefore antibacterial suture is by far a solution to infections like surgicalsteinfection (SSI), which is an infection mainly caused by (S.aureu) and (E.coli) and to a number of unique properties of nano-zinc oxide, the nanoparticles of Zinc oxide are excellent antibacterial agents in antibacterial suture since ZnO-NP coated sutures have a tremendous bacterial inactivation and also in many other ways. ZnO-NPs were synthesized and have an average size of around 112nm. Zinc oxide nanoparticles have proved to have a high antibacterial action against bacteria S. aureus and E. coli and their activity can last up to five days. The ZnO NP-coated exhibited a high performance on bacterial inactivation.