A Novel Microbial Bio-Milling Technique for the Size Reduction of Micron Sized Gd_2O_3 Particles into Nanosized Particles

摘要

The development of a novel green top-down approach called bio-milling for synthesizing the oxide nanomaterials is an issue of topical interest. While a number of chemical processes are energy intensive and involve toxic chemicals. Synthesizing the particles of size less than 10 nm is also a great challenge for these chemical processes. On the other hand, the process of bio-milling is capable to synthesize the particles of size less than 10 nm at room temperature in the ambient conditions of pH and pressure without using harsh chemicals. Here we report the bio-milling of gadolinium oxide (Gd_2O_3) by challenging the fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae against aqueous solution of Gd_2O_3 to synthesize the biogenic nanoparticles. The extracellular breaking of microscaled Gd_2O_3 particles by biomolecules/proteins secreted by the fungus under stressed condition results in the formation of particles in nanoregime.