Physicochemical and microbicidal characteristics of α-Fe2O3 (hematite) nanoparticles immobilized on the dendritic platform of hyperbranched polyglycerol

Stabilization and surface modification are the two most important strategies applicable for the synthesis of nanoparticles. The present study has made use of the high versatility of dendritic hyperbranched polyglycerol in the fabrication of a stabilized alpha-Fe2O3 nanoparticle system. The dendritic scaffold has successfully served to stabilize the nanosystem and to retain their dimensions in nano realm by efficiently preventing the agglomeration of the particles. The synthesis followed a sodium borohydride reduction strategy followed by air oxidation. The stabilized nanosystem was then studied for their optical, structural, morphological, magnetic and thermal characteristics using different analytical and instrumentation techniques such as UV and PL spectroscopies, XRD, SEM and TEM microscopies, VSM and TG/DTG. Antibacterial and antifungal studies were performed against five highly pathogenic bacterial and fungal strains each using Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion and agar-well diffusion protocols respectively. Minimum inhibitory concentration of the system against all the microbial strain was figured out using broth micro dilution procedure. The developed system exhibited considerable microbicidal activity against all the strains under study.