A facile and eco-friendly approach is developed for the synthesis of a poly(3-hydroxybutyrate)–chitosan (PHB–chit) polymer conjugate, which is an ideal material for the synthesis of safer gold nanoparticles (nAu). The synthesized products are characterized by various electron-based, optical and spectroscopic techniques including the catalytic activity and the stability/toxicity of nAu. In contrast to the conventional synthesis approaches, the use of PHB–chit results in generation of a highly stable and size-controlled nAu material that exhibits important catalytic activity towards the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol, and at the same time shows no toxicity against living bacterial systems such as Escherichia coli or Staphylococcus aureus. The synthesis route reported herein would inspire future developments that circumvent toxicity issues of relevance to living systems while performing common catalytic experimentation.

中文翻译：

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聚（3-羟基丁酸酯）-壳聚糖聚合物共轭物用于安全金纳米颗粒的合成及其应用

开发了一种简便且环保的方法来合成聚（3-羟基丁酸酯）-壳聚糖（PHB-chit）聚合物共轭物，这是合成更安全的金纳米粒子（nAu）的理想材料。合成产物的特征在于各种基于电子的，光学和光谱学技术，包括nAu的催化活性和稳定性/毒性。与传统的合成方法相比，使用PHB-chit可以产生高度稳定且受尺寸控制的nAu材料，该材料对将4-硝基苯酚（4-NP）还原为4-氨基苯酚具有重要的催化活性，并且同时显示对活细菌系统（如大肠杆菌或金黄色葡萄球菌）无毒性。本文报道的合成路线将启发未来的发展，在进行常见的催化实验时，可避免与生命系统有关的毒性问题。