Centre for Pollution Control and Environmental Engineering, Pondicherry University, Puducherry-605 014, India E-mail : abbasi.cpee@gmail.com Concurrently with Department of Fire Protection Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA A bioinspired method of gold nanoparticles synthesis utilizing the highly invasive aquatic weed, Eichhornia crassipes, is presented. In an attempt to utilize the entire plant, the extracts of all its parts – leaves, petiole and root – were

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... employed in various proportions with the gold precursor, HAuCl4 solution, for the synthesis. The reduction of gold ions to nanoparticles was tracked using UV-Vis spectroscopy. The electron micrographs of the synthesized nanoparticles revealed the presence of particles of monodispersed spherical and polydispersed pentagonal, hexagonal, rod, truncated triangle and spherical shapes in sizes ranging 4–30 nm and 57–96 nm respectively. The presence of gold atoms was confirmed from the EDAX and X-ray diffraction studies. The FT-IR spectral study indicated that the proteins and polyols in the plant extract could have been responsible for the reduction of the gold ions to gold nanoparticles.