The emission of mercury into environment poses a serious threat to the ecosystem and has an antagonistic effect on health of living organisms. The toxic mercury pollutants are arising from both industrial waste and natural sources. Various analytical techniques have been established to determine their contents within the media, however, the more expensive nature and low selectivity limit their utilization at the industrial scale. In this work, we developed a fluorescent nanoparticle-based portable sensor for detecting mercury species in aquatic environments. For this purpose, amino-functionalized silica nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by the sol-gel Stober method using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTS). Then, pyrene-carboxylic acid functionality was chemically attached to amino-functionalized silica NPs by a coupling reaction. The synthesized materials were characterized by FTIR, <sup>1</sup>H-NMR, XRD, and SEM. The optical properties of fluorescent pyrene-functionalized silica NPs were measured using an optical microscope. Finally, the suitability/selectivity of synthesized fluorescent NPs was investigated for mercury sensing applications. The results demonstrated that the fluorescent pyrene-functionalized silica NPs have great potential to fabricate highly selective, sensitive, and portable opto-chemical sensors for mercury sensing applications.

Development of opto-chemical mercury sensor using fluorescent pyrene-functionalized silica nanoparticles

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.