The Physiochemical and Biological Characterization of Nanostructured Materials Derived from Natural Processes

The thesis focuses on the study of nanostructured materials obtained from natural sources. The work presented in this thesis was designed to 1) develop protocols for a complete Physico-chemical characterization of micro-and nanomaterials derived from calcified seaweed. Such protocols were achieved by combining several different characterization techniques and were able to unravel unexpected material features at the nanoscale; 2) obtain nanostructured metallic particles from the calcified seaweeds through a multistep extraction protocol and investigate their interactions with cells. The extensive characterization work carried out along this project, especially using electron microscopy, also allowed to develop methods for the visualization of endogenous biological material associated with nanoparticles after their interaction with biomolecules and the intracellular environment.