Self-assembly And Surface Modification Of Sulfur Nanoparticles In Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) And Its Antibacterial Activities

The sulfur and sulfur compounds have various biological activities, such as reduce heavy metal toxicity, free radical scavenging, antioxidant activity, antibacterial, anticancer activity, etc. It is reported that the shape and size of sulfur nanomaterials are the most important factors for its performance and application.Polyethylene glycol (PEG), which is a stable solvent with high boiling point, is used to be a dispersant and modulation agent for the self-assembly and surface modification of sulfur nanomaterials in our study. Sucrose, as a modulation agent, modulates sulfur nanomaterials in the sulfur-PEG colloid. We also analyzed the morphology, size, stability and antibacterial activity of the products.1. Self-assembly of sulfur nanoparticles in PEGFirstly, the colloid of sulfur was prepared by dissolving sulfur in PEG(200,400, and 600). The results show that sulfur has the same solubility in those three PEG at 125℃, and the higher the temperature the higher the solubility. The size and morphology were observed by particle size analyzer and TEM, respectively. The higher concentration of sulfur and the longer aging time led to the bigger size of products and different morphology products, such as rods, bulk and branch.2.Fabrication and self-assembly mechanism of sulfur nanorods in PEG200Firstly, the colloid of sulfur and PEG 200 was prepared by dissolving sulfur in PEG. The mixture system was analyzed by resonance rayleigh scattering, TEM, FT-IR. We also discuss the self-assembly mechanism of sulfur nanorods. The results show that there is no chemical reaction but physical cross-linking between PEG and S0 nanoparticles3. Sucrose as modulation agent for the fabirication of sulfur nanorods.Sulfur nanomaterials were characterized by TEM, nanosize analyzer, FT-IR. The results showed that sucrose functioned by controlling the size of nano-sulfur, and by ultrasound, the modified nanoparticles can be induced to form chains of sulfur connection.4.The antibacterial activity of sulfur nanomaterials.E.coli, a typical gram-negative bacterial and Staphylococcus aureus, a typical Gram-positive bacteria, were used as test strains for the antibacterial activity study. And the antibacterial activity of products was tested by plate counting.The results show that the higher the concentration of sulfur and the smaller the nano-particle size, the better the anti-bacterial activity of nano-sulfur. And the antibacterial activity is more obvious for Staphylococcus aureus.