The effect of capping agents on the toxicity of silver nanoparticles to Danio rerio embryos

Abstract

Addition of capping agents like surfactants and polymers during the synthesis of nanoparticles may affect the stability and toxicity of dispersions of nanoparticles. This study revealed the impact of anionic, cationic, and amphoteric surfactants and a cationic polymer on the physical and chemical properties, stability and behavior of silver nanomaterials, as well as on the toxicity of nanosized silver particles with respect to zebrafish embryos. Some of the stabilizers applied were shown to significantly affect embryos of Danio rerio. Colloidal dispersions of stabilized silver nanoparticles were demonstrated to induce a complex mechanism of toxicity with respect to embryos of D. rerio, which is mainly explained by the toxicity of the organic ligand, while other parameters are somewhat inferior. The newly generated data on the toxicity of nanoparticles and their stabilizers with respect to D. rerio embryos reveal the complexity of the toxicity mechanism of nanoparticles impacting living systems.

Acknowledgments

We kindly thank Evgeniy Evtushenko for the help with the NTA analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was partially supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in the framework of the Increase of Competitiveness Program of NUST ‘MISiS’ (No. К2- 2017-011) in the part related to the preparation of materials and the Russian Science Foundation (grant no. 14-50-00126) in the part related to the characterization and ecotoxicity studies. Partial support by the EU-sponsored H2020 project ‘GRACIOUS’, grant agreement number 760840, is kindly acknowledged.