Formaldehyde is an environmental pollutant. Detection of low harmful exposure levels of formaldehyde indoor and that of disease-relevant ultra-low ppb concentrations is challenging due to the small size of this molecule, which does not yield enough signal changes in sensors at low concentrations in comparison to large biomolecules (e.g., DNA, proteins, and antibodies). Hence, various surfaces, material designs, and analytical strategies have constantly been developed to achieve low detection limits of small biomarkers such as formaldehyde. Herein, we demonstrate a sensing strategy of coupling sensitive surface plasmon resonance imaging with colorimetric formaldehyde detection to enable an ultra-low detection limit (86 parts per trillion) compare with 12,000 parts per trillion detection limit of the traditional UV-visible method. The recovery of spiked 50-times diluted serum and urine samples is 92.07% and 66.92% respectively. The selectivity evaluation was assessed from a series of comparison experiments in 1 ppm analytes, also the interference effect of the urea existence to the recovery of formaldehyde of the urine sample, has been investigated. Thus, the concept of hyphenating sensitive surface plasmon transduction principle with colorimetric reactions has the potential to amplify analyte detection signals, which thus represents a broader significance for health and environmental applications.

Ultra-sensitive surface plasmonic colorimetric sensor array: Small Molecules Detection

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ACS Fall 2022

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