ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nanotechnol.

Sec. Biomedical Nanotechnology

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnano.2025.1567693

This article is part of the Research TopicNanocomposites in Medical Applications: Bridging the Gap between Materials Science and MedicineView all 3 articles

From Cotton Gin Byproduct to Nano-in-Nano Structured Hybrid Composite for Effective Pathogen Control

Provisionally accepted
Sunghyun NamSunghyun Nam1*Modesto OlanyaModesto Olanya1Jacobs H JordanJacobs H Jordan1Joseph UknalisJoseph Uknalis2Zhongqi HeZhongqi He1Nayeem Hasan KashemNayeem Hasan Kashem1David FangDavid Fang1
  • 1Southern Regional Research Center, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), New Orleans, United States
  • 2Eastern Regional Research Center, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Cotton gin byproduct (CGB), a high-volume byproduct of cotton processing composed of discarded plant materials, is often underutilized despite its abundance and potential value. In this study, CGB was upcycled into a nano-in-nano structured composite with potent antimicrobial properties, offering a sustainable solution for agricultural waste management and pathogen control. Cellulose nanofibers (CNF) were extracted from CGB and used as an active biotemplate for the in situ synthesis of antimicrobial silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs). CNF inherently facilitated the formation of Ag NPs (17.2 ± 4.7 nm, 6.8 wt%) without the need for external reducing or stabilizing agents, resulting in a hybrid nanocomposite (Ag-CNF). This embedded nanostructure demonstrated stability and potent antimicrobial efficacy, achieving >99.99% reduction of S. Typhimurium and L. monocytogenes within 10 min, P. aeruginosa within 1 h, and S. aureus within 24 h at a 0.5 wt% concentration. These findings suggest the potential of Ag-CNF as an eco-friendly antimicrobial material with applications in disease prevention and sustainable waste utilization.

Keywords: cotton gin byproduct1, cellulose nanofiber2, nanocomposite3, green synthesis4, pathogen control5

Received: 28 Jan 2025; Accepted: 23 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Nam, Olanya, Jordan, Uknalis, He, Kashem and Fang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Sunghyun Nam, Southern Regional Research Center, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), New Orleans, United States

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material