GREEN SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES OBTAINED FROM THYMUS VULGARIS L. HYDROLAT

Abstract

The essential oil industry has grown over the last decade and is generating a lot of useful by-products
with diverse industrial applications in food, cosmetics, textile, and more recently in phytosynthesis of metal nanoparticles.
GC-MS analysis performed on the hydrolat identified 18 out of the 21 compounds detected, and the major terpenic class
was represented by oxygenated monoterpenes 92.63% (1-octen-3-ol, endo-borneol, carvacrol methyl ether, thymol,
carvacrol). Obtaining quasi-spherical silver nanoparticles from hydrolat and 0.1 mM AgNO3 solution was simple,
effective, and non-toxic, yielding stable nanoparticles with average particle size under 45 nm. UV-Vis spectroscopy
revealed a strong signal at 438 nm indicating the formation of silver nanoparticles and SEM-EDX analysis revealed that
elemental Ag was detected and confirmed by a strong signal at 3 keV with more than 91% silver.