Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 4724–4728 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings 2214-7853© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 9th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization, ICMPC-2019 ICMPC-2019 Synthesis of silver nanoparticles from a bioactive precursor Leema M a , Gayathri Sreekumar a , Akhil Sivan a , Zeena S. Pillai a * a Department of Chemistry, Amrita School of Arts and Sciences, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, Kollam - 690525, Kerala, India Abstract Silver nanoparticles are well known for their medicinal properties from time immemorial. Improving their potential applications demands a greener approach to synthesise them. Embelin, a bioactive molecule belonging to the Myrsinaceae family has gained considerable research interest over the past few years due to its diverse properties as anti-inflammatory, antitumour, analgesic and antimicrobial agent. Being an antioxidant, embelin is capable of reducing metal to metal nanoparticles. In this report, reduction of silver to silver nanoparticles has been carried out using embelin. The silver nanoparticles thus formed were characterised using absorption spectroscopy as well as TEM measurement. The synergic effect on the activity of the silver- embelin system is compared with pure embelin. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 9th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization, ICMPC-2019 Keywords: Embelia ribes; Silver nanoparicle; Green synthesis; Antibacterial 1. Introduction Metal nanoparticles, over the past few decades have gained plenty of attention due to the various applications (catalysis, electronics, drug delivery, sensors, HIV treatment, medicines, cancer treatment and agriculture) [1-3] owing to their unique optical and electronic properties. In olden days, colloidal silver was used as a germicide and disinfectant. They possess commendable antimicrobial activity as well [4]. This extends their application to a huge range of fields like medicine, water treatment, disinfective coating on metals as well as textiles, sunscreen lotions [5- 7] etc. The excellent anti-inflammatory property of nano silver could be utilised in developing better dressings for * Corresponding author E-mail address: zeenaspillai@am.amrita.edu