Hindawi Publishing Corporation Te Scientifc World Journal Volume 2013, Article ID 362890, 5 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/362890 Research Article Optimization of Green Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles from Leaf Extracts of Pimenta dioica (Allspice) Akshay Rajeev Geetha, 1,2 Elizabeth George, 1 Akshay Srinivasan, 1,3 and Jameel Shaik 1 1 School of Bio Sciences & Technology, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India 2 SB Industries, Chennai 600032, India 3 Dance with Pal, Bangalore 560075, India Correspondence should be addressed to Jameel Shaik; jameel.shaik@gmail.com Received 31 August 2013; Accepted 8 October 2013 Academic Editors: K. Kalishwaralal and S. Zanganeh Copyright © 2013 Akshay Rajeev Geetha et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Production of silver nanoparticles from the leaf extracts of Pimenta dioica is reported for the frst time in this paper. Tree diferent sets of leaves were utilized for the synthesis of nanoparticles—fresh, hot-air oven dried, and sun-dried. Tese nanoparticles were characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy and AFM. Te results were diverse in that diferent sizes were seen for diferent leaf conditions. Nanoparticles synthesized using sun-dried leaves (produced using a particular ratio (1 : 0.5) of the leaf extract sample and silver nitrate (1mM), resp.) possessed the smallest sizes. We believe that further optimization of the current green-synthesis method would help in the production of monodispersed silver nanoparticles having great potential in treating several diseases. 1. Introduction Among the various inorganic metal nanoparticles, silver nanoparticles have received substantial attention for vari- ous reasons—silver is an efective antimicrobial agent that exhibits low toxicity [1, 2]; silver nanoparticles have diverse in vitro and in vivo applications [3, 4]. Although there are many routes [5, 6] available for the synthesis of sil- ver nanoparticles, bioinspired synthesis using plant sources ofers several advantages such as cost-efectiveness, eco- friendliness, and the elimination of high pressure, energy, temperature, and toxic chemicals necessary in the traditional synthesis methods [7]. Several plants have been utilized for the production of silver nanoparticles [8–10]. In this work, leaf extracts of Pimenta dioica were used for the generation of silver nanoparticles. Numerous studies on Pimenta dioica [11, 12] have been conducted and it was found that the leaf extracts generated from Pimenta dioica have strong fungicidal [13], bactericidal [14, 15] properties. In addition it also has acaricidal [16, 17], nematicidal [18], anticancer [19], antioxidant [19, 20], and deodorizing properties. All these properties make the leaf extracts generated highly resistant to spoilage and they can be stored for up to three months even in contaminated areas quite safely. However not all leaf extracts from other plant sources stay for so long. Tis property of Pimenta dioica makes it extremely useful for industrial nanoparticle synthesis where long term storage of leaf extract is possible. Besides its use as a spice and favor, allspice has been used for various gastrointestinal illness, rheumatism, and neuralgia. Te leaf extracts also have antiseptic, anesthetic, and several other medical properties [11, 12]. In order to exploit all the above mentioned benefts of bioinspired synthesis along with those provided by nan- otechnology, silver nanoparticles were generated from the leaf extracts of Pimenta dioica using a previously published method [10]. In addition once we learnt that nanoparticles were synthesised, we determined the optimized conditions for silver nanoparticles synthesis in this plant by studying the infuence of diferent factors on the formation of nanoparti- cles. (i) Te frst factor we considered for optimization was the leaf sample. We took three variations of leaf extract sample of the plant, that is, fresh, hot-air oven dried, and sun-dried leaves.