A sandwich-like chitosan-based antibacterial nanocomposite film with reduced graphene oxide immobilized silver nanoparticles.

Bacterial breeding is the main cause of food perishability, which is harmful to human health. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are one of the most widely used antimicrobial agents, but they are easy to release and cause cumulative toxicity. In this work, with corn stalk as green reductant and GO as template, a simple electrostatic self-assembled sandwich-like chitosan (CS) wrapped rGO@AgNPs nanocomposite film (CS/rGO@AgNPs) was synthesized to achieve stabilizing and controlled-release of AgNPs. The results showed that the the CS/rGO@AgNPs film continued releasing AgNPs for up to 14 days, and the final release amount of silver nanoparticles was only about 1.9 %. More importantly, the nanocomposite film showed durable antibacterial effect and good antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus, and they showed no toxicity to cells. Hence, the nanocomposite film has potential application as an effective and safe packaging material to prolong the shelf life of food products.