Sudan has a tremendous wealth flora due to its unique geographical location and diverse climate. Vast records of plants and plants' secondary metabolites are reported to possess redox capacity and can be exploited for the biosynthesis of nanoparticles. Plant-mediated synthesis of silver nanoparticles is preferred due to their availability and their various metabolites. The present review explores the potentiality and diversity of biological activities of silver nanoparticles that originated from the combination of silver and phyto-constituents of mostly traditionally used Sudanese medicinal and aromatic plants. The green synthesis methods of silver nanoparticles mediated by more than 45 traditionally used medicinal plants are critically reviewed. In addition, parameters that affect the synthesis of plant-mediated silver nanoparticles, their characterization techniques and various biological activities are summarized and discussed. Thus, the study of green synthesis of silver nanoparticles and its applications can be extended to involve vast plant diversity of Sudan.

The labeling strategy with gold nanoparticles for the conventional surface plasmon resonance (SPR) signal enhancement has been frequently used for the sensitive determination of small molecules binding to its interaction partners. However, the influence of gold nanoparticles with different size and shape on SPR signal is not known. In this paper, three kinds of gold nanoparticles, namely nanorods, nanospheres, and nanooctahedrons with different size, were prepared and used to investigate their effects on the conventional SPR signal at a fixed excitation wavelength 670 nm. It was found that the SPR signal (i.e., resonant angle shift) was varied with the shapes and sizes of gold nanoparticles in suspension at a fixed concentration due to their different plasmon absorbance bands. For gold nanorods with different longitudinal absorbance bands, three conventional SPR signal regions could be clearly observed when the gold nanorod suspensions were separately introduced onto the SPR sensor chip surface. One region was the longitudinal absorbance bands coinciding with or close to the SPR excitation wavelength that suppressed the SPR angle shift. The second region was the longitudinal absorbance bands at 624 to 639 and 728 to 763 nm that produced a moderate increase on the SPR resonant angle shift. The third region was found for the longitudinal absorbance bands from 700 to 726 nm that resulted in a remarkable increase in the SPR angle shift responses. This phenomenon can be explained on the basis of calculation of the correlation of SPR angle shift response with the gold nanorod longitudinal absorbance bands. For nanospheres and nanooctahedrons, the SPR angle shift responses were found to be particle shape and size dependent in a simple way with a sustaining increase when the sizes of the nanoparticles were increased. Consequently, a guideline for choosing gold nanoparticles as tags is suggested for the SPR determination of small molecules with binding to the immobilized interaction partners.

Cobalt-nanoferrite as a magnetic separable material has drawn the attention of researchers due to its unique properties, significant applications and high potentiality in wastewater treatment. In this study, the cobalt nanoferrite was synthesized by chemical co-precipitation method at different annealing temperatures and characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electronic microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and UV-visible spectroscopy. Then the synthesized nanoferrite was assessed and used for the treatment of tannery wastewater. The characterizations confirmed the formation of nanoferrites with size between 15 and 23 nm. The average particle size increased with increase of annealing temperatures. Typical values for tannery wastewater treatment efficiency for chromium, total dissolved solids, biochemical oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand were 23.75, 90.83, 52.72 and 48.07% respectively. Thus, the treatment by nanoferrites appears a promising and effective method for the removal of contaminants.

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Employing plant extracts to obtain nanomaterials is an ecofriendly and highly appreciated synthetic approach. In this work a simple, green chemistry method, based on sol–gel, was used for ZnO nanoparticles synthesis by using two Sudanese medicinal plant extracts: Adanosia digitata (ZnO-A) and Balanites aegyptiaca (ZnO-B) under ultrasonic energy. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed the formation of wurtzite hexagonal ZnO nanostructures, while the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis displayed their diverse morphologies. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) data showed the impact of extract via the variation in of the O1s and Zn2p3/2 and Zn2p1/2 orbitals binding energy of Zn–O. The UV-visible investigation indicated a variation of bandgap energy (E g ), where the ZnO nanoparticles displayed the lowest E g . The synthesized nanomaterials have exhibited high photocatalytic efficiency towards the methylene blue (MB) dye. The findings revealed the possibility of obtaining nanoparticles with tailored properties by using plants extracts.

Non-adsorption of water dispersible gold nanoparticles (GNPs) is a major concern in its widely labeling applications. This paper presents the investigation of the adsorption properties of GNPs with superficially tethered ferrocene functions to different surfaces. The GNPs were coated with a mixed monolayer of PEG-thiol and progargyl PEG-thiol, and the later was linked with a ferrocene moiety (Fc) through the alkyne-azide click reaction. The adsorption behaviors of the Fc-GNP to glassy carbon, gold and platinum electrodes, in the absence and presence of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) or protein layer, were studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV). It was found that the bare gold electrode possessed higher adsorption capacity. However, the adsorption was either reduced or completely prevented when the gold electrode was modified with monolayers of 2-mercaptoethanol (ME), dodecanethiolate (DT) and PEG-thiol. The electroactive and water dispersible GNPs with Fc labels allows us to use CV to explore the interaction between these GNP and bovine serum albumin (BSA). The BSA modified electrode resulted in better resistant to adsorption compared to other modifiers coated electrodes. Thus, the study of non-specific interaction by CV was found effective when compared to results obtained by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and FTIR.