Biosynthesis of Highly Dispersed Palladium Nanoparticles Using Astraglmanna Aqueous Extract Khalil Farhadi, a, * Atefeh Pourhossein, a Mehrdad Forough, a Rahim Molaei, a Ali Abdi b and Abbas Siyami c a Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran. P.O.Box 165-5715944931 b Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran c University College of Zarrineh, Khoy, Iran (Received: Jan. 3, 2013; Accepted: Apr. 1, 2013; Published Online: May 16, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/jccs.201300006) Biosynthesis of nanoparticles has received increased attention due to a growing need to develop environ- mentally benign technologies in material synthesis and employment of secondary metabolites from plant extract that has emerged as a novel technology for this purpose. In this study, a rapid and biogenic process for fabrication of palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs) is reported. Highly dispersed palladium nanoparticles were successfully prepared by using aqueous extract of Astraglmanna, a non-toxic and eco-friendly mate- rial, without extra surfactant, capping agent, and template. The PdNPs were characterized by using UV– Visible spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope - energy dispersive spectra (SEM-EDX), Fourier transform infra red spectroscopy (FTIR), dynamic light scattering (DLS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) images of the PdNPs were recorded and mean size of the biosynthesized nanoparticles was found to be approximately 15 nm. Keywords: Astraglmanna; Biological; Nanoparticles; Palladium; Synthesis. INTRODUCTION Nanotechnology applies the techniques and pro- cesses of micro fabrication to build devices for studying bio-systems and has a wide range of applications in the va- riety of fields. 1 Recently, this scientific approach has emerged as an elementary division of science and technol- ogy that investigates and regulates the interaction at cell level between biological and synthetic materials with the aid of nanoparticles. 2 Nanoparticles of noble and transition metals, such as gold, silver, platinum, and palladium are widely used in products that come into direct contact with the human body including shoes, detergents, cosmetics, jewelery, and toothpaste, as well as medical, biological and pharmaceutical applications. 3 To date, there are growing interests on the research, synthesize and the development of transition metal nanoparticles owing to their ultra unique physical, chemical, and thermodynamic properties that have made them useful in different fields of science, such as catalysis, medicine, electronics, etc, and for their poten- tial applications in nanoelectronics. In particular, PdNPs have become of increasing scientific interest as catalysts for carbon–carbon bond-forming reactions such as Suzuki– Miyaura cross-coupling reactions. 4–7 A wide variety of physical, chemical and biological processes results in the synthesis of Pd nanoparticles have been reported, some of these are novel and others are quite common. Moreover, the usual methods for producing PdNPs involve chemical reduction of palladium salts aqueous solutions by alcohol, 8 sodium borohydride, 9 hydrazine, 10 poly-ethyleneglycol (PEG), 11 ascorbic acid, 12 dimethylamine-borane (DMAB) in supercritical carbon dioxide, 13 and etc. However, there are evidences for the harmfulness of these synthesized nanoparticles to the environment and biosystems. Also, most of these reported methods are extremely expensive and involve the use of toxic chemicals and hazardous mate- rials, which may pose potential environmental and biologi- cal risks. Moreover, these techniques suffer from a certain complexity and generally require high temperature condi- tions and special instrumentation to complete the reduction reaction of soluble palladium ions. Therefore, there is a need to prepare and employ more and more eco-friendly nanoparticles that are best suited to environment. Anyway, exploring the new strategy to manufacturing effective metal nanoparticles supported with easy and safe prepara- tion techniques is of great importance for industrial inter- ests. For these reasons, the synthesis and fabrication of nanoparticles would benefit from the development of clean, nontoxic and environmentally acceptable ‘‘green 1144 © 2013 The Chemical Society Located in Taipei & Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim J. Chin. Chem. Soc. 2013, 60, 1144-1149 Article * Corresponding author. Fax: +98-441-2776707; E-mail: khalil.farhadi@yahoo.com; kh.farhadi@mail.urmia.ac.ir JOURNAL OF THE CHINESE CHEMICAL SOCIETY