INVESTIGATION OF THE ANTIBACTERIAL EFFICACY OF ZINC OXIDE NANOPARTICLES (ZNO NPS) BASED IRRIGANT AGAINST ENTEROCOCCUS FAECALIS CONCERNING ROOT CANAL DISINFECTIONJayant Pawar, G.R. Pathade and E.A. SinghAbstract The present study is aimed to investigate the antibacterial efficacy of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) based irrigants for root canal disinfection. The ZnO NPs-based irrigant was tested in-vitro on Enterococcus faecalis (ATCC: 29212) with NaOCl as a positive control. In this direction, ZnO NPs are very important as they are biocompatible, non-cytotoxic, cheap and easy to produce. The synthesis of ZnO NPs was carried out by facile semi-solvo thermal route using zinc acetate and urea as precursors and a mixture of deionized water and ethylene glycol as solvent. The optical, structural and morphological analyses were carried out by UV-Vis spectroscopy, XRD, SEM and TEM. The qualitative and quantitative antimicrobial activity of ZnO NPs were tested against Enterococcus faecalis containing 1/*105 CFU/ml. The structural and morphological analysis of ZnO NPs reveals the formation of a hexagonal crystal structure having flowerlike morphology where each flower is made up of petals with a thickness of 10-50 nm. The absorption edge was found to be shifted to the lower wavelength at 340 nm which can be due to the size quantization effect. The band gap value was calculated to be 3.65 eV. The inhibition zones were observed in all concentrations with positive control. The MIC and MBC of ZnO NPs were found to be 250 μg/ml and 1000 μg/ml, respectively. Overall, ZnO NPs synthesized by the semi-solvo thermal method were found to be an effective antibacterial agent against E. faecalis. Therefore, ZnO NPs can be used in irrigant solutions for better protection of the oral canal from E. faecalis. |