Fabrication of Curcumin Encapsulated Chitosan-PVA Silver Nanocomposite Films for Improved Antimicrobial Activity

The present study explores the in situ fabrication of chitosan-poly(vinyl alcohol)-silver nanocomposite films in view of their increasing applications as antimicrobial packaging, wound dressing and antibacterial materials. The reduction of silver ions into silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) is achieved in acidic solution of chitosan (C) and poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) using their functional groups (-OH, -COOH, -NH2 groups). The presence of silver nanoparticles in the chito-san-PVA film is confirmed by UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-ray Dif-fraction (XRD) analysis. The Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) images illustrate the presence of embedded silver nanoparticles throughout the films. In addition, the formed silver nanoparticles have an average particle size of ~ 16.5 nm as observed by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The anti-microbial and anti-fungal activity of the chitosan-PVA silver nanoparticle films have demonstrated significant effects against Escherichia coli (E. coli), Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, Micrococcus, Candida albicans, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa). To improve further their therapeutic efficacy as anti-microbial agents, curcumin encapsulated chitosan-PVA silver nanocomposite films are developed which showed enormous growth inhibition of E. coli compared to curcumin and chitosan-PVA silver nanoparticles film alone. Therefore, the present study clearly provides novel antimicrobial films which are potentially useful in preventing/treating infections.