Water pollution is a serious global problem that affects ecosystems and public health. Although a number of analytical techniques are available for the analysis of water contaminants (e.g. atomic absorption spectrometry, atomic emission spectrometry, gas and liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, etc.), they require expensive benchtop instrumentation. Consequently, there is a growing interest in alternative low-cost, portable chemical sensing schemes. Metallic nanoparticles offer unique optical properties that have been exploited in the design of optical sensors (colorimetric, fluorescent, scattering) for water contaminants. Here, a Hg(II) nanosensor based on the analyte-induced aggregation of gold nanoparticles is characterized and implemented using two low-cost, portable devices that monitor the wavelength-ratiometric resonance Rayleigh scattering (RRS) response of the sensor upon white LED illumination. Our results indicate that the response of the sensor monitored with these compact devices is comparable to that measured using expensive benchtop instrumentation. We believe that numerous plasmonic nanosensors could be implemented using the described devices for field-deployable applications.

Portable low-cost instrumentation for metallic colloid scattering chemical sensors of water contaminants

255th National Meeting (2018)

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