Antimicrobial agents, metallic nanoparticles

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Microbial cellulose is found to be an optimal material for skin tissue repair due to its ability to provide a moist environment for wound healing and pain free dress changing. Unfortrmately, microbial cellulose itself has no antimicrobial activity to prevent wound infection. However the lack of antimicrobial activity of microbial cellulose is the main issue to be tackled. To improve the antimicrobial activity of microbial cellulose, researchers have introduced different materials such as benzalkonium chloride, chitosan and metallic nanoparticles into microbial cellulose. Among them metallic nanoparticles such as copper, silver [56] and ZnO [57] have been recently reported as excellent antimicrobial agents. Due to the electron-rich oxygen atoms in the microbial cellulose macromolecules and the large surface area of nanoporous microbial cellulose effective as nanoreactor, the in-situ metallization technique was successfully applied to the synthesis of Ag and microbial cellulose nanocomposite, which could in turn serve as antimicrobial skin tissue repair material. 

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