The increasing demand and limited natural resources of noble metals make its recovery from dilute industrial wastes attractive, especially when using environmentally friendly methods. Nowadays, the high impact that nanotechnology is having in both science and society offers new research possibilities. Metal nanoparticles have attracted a great scientific interest due to their unique optoelectronic and physicochemical properties. These properties strongly depend on size, shape, crystallinity and structure. Consequently, there are a wide range of potential applications in diverse areas such as molecular diagnostics, electronics, catalysis, drug delivery or sensing. Different physical and chemical methods have been employed for the synthesis of metal nanoparticles. However, they use harmful chemicals that may represent a risk to the environment and public health. Hence the need to develop environmentally friendly procedures to recover precious metals. The use of biological organisms in synthesis and assembly of nanoparticles has received increasing attention. Biosynthesis of noble metal nanoparticles has attracted scientists’ attention as a new clean, cost-effective and efficient synthesis technique. There are several organisms capable of synthesizing nanoparticles such as bacteria, yeasts, actinomycetes, fungi and plants. Although biological formation of nanoparticles has been broadly studied in recent years, the mechanisms involved in this process have not been yet clearly elucidated. This review remarks the importance of bionanotechnology, considering new advances in biological synthesis of noble metal nanoparticles, its mechanisms and its potential applications.
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Castro et al. (2014) studied this question.