Green synthesis of silver using Eucalyptus camaldulensis leaf extract and evaluation of its antibacterial and antifungal activities

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Food and Drug, Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, Jahrom, Iran

2 Department of Nanotechnology, Faculty of Engineering, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran

10.30476/tips.2026.111261.1356

Abstract

Silver as a noble metal has played an important role in the treatment of infectious diseases. Various techniques are adopted in order to synthesize silver, the most important of which are physical and chemical methods. Although these approaches are much widely used, they are economically expensive and utilize toxic chemicals. To overcome these issues, green synthesis is put forward since it is cost-effective and environmentally friendly.
This research focuses on green synthesis of silver using Eucalyptus camaldulensis (E. camaldulensis) leaf extract. For this purpose, silver nitrate was employed as the source of silver ions and E. camaldulensis leaves extract was utilized in order to reduce Ag+ ions into Ag0. Then, the resulting Ag powder was structurally characterized by means of different techniques. Ultimately, the antibacterial and antifungal properties of green-synthesized Ag were examined against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) bacteria and Candida albicans (C. albicans) and Aspergillus niger (A. niger) fungi using different antimicrobial assays.
In accordance with XRD results, the resulting powder predominantly included silver. In addition to FTIR, the presence of reducing agents of phytochemical compounds were confirmed by total phenolic content (TPC) and total flavonoid content (TFC) measurements. Based on antimicrobial evaluations, the synthesized Ag revealed antibacterial and antifungal activities against E. coli and S. aureus bacteria and C. albicans and A. niger fungi. In accordance with our findings, the proposed approach in this study could suggest a facile, green, and eco-friendly method for synthesizing Ag possessing antibacterial and antifungal activities.

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