Ligand exchange on the surface of cadmium telluride quantum dots with fluorosurfactant-capped gold nanoparticles: Synthesis, characterization and toxicity evaluation

Colorimetric optical nanosensors for trace explosive detection using metal nanoparticles: advances, pitfalls, and future perspective

Warfare threats and acts of terror are challenging situations encountered by defense agencies across the globe and are of growing concern to the general public, and security-minded policy makers. Detecting ultra-low quantities of explosive compounds in remote locations or under harsh conditions for anti-terror purposes as well as the environmental monitoring of residual or discarded explosives in soil, remains a major challenge. The use of metal nanoparticles (NPs) for trace explosive detection has drawn considerable interest in recent years. For nano-based explosive sensor devices to meet real-life operational demands, analytical parameters such as, long-shelf life, stability under harsh conditions, ease-of-use, high sensitivity, excellent selectivity, and rapid signal response must be met. Generally, the analytical performance of colorimetric-based nanosensor systems is strongly dependent on the surface properties of the nanomaterial used in the colorimetric assay. The size and shape properties of metal NPs, surface functionalisation efficiency, and assay fabrication methods, are factors that influence the efficacy of colorimetric explosive nanosensor systems. This review reports on the design and analytical performances of colorimetric explosive sensor systems using metal NPs as optical signal transducers. The challenges of trace explosive detection, advances in metal NP colorimetric explosive design, limitations of each methods, and possible strategies to mitigate the problems are discussed.

Removal of ammonia-nitrogen in wastewater using a novel poly ligand exchanger-Zn(II)-loaded chelating resin

In this study, a novel poly ligand exchanger-Zn(II)-loaded resin was designed to effectively remove ammonia-nitrogen (NH₃-N) from wastewater. The surface morphology and structure of the Zn-loaded resin were characterized using scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), respectively. SEM shows the surfaces of the Zn(II)-loaded resin were rough and nonporous and EDS demonstrated that Zn²⁺ was loaded onto the resin successfully. In addition, the combination form of Zn(II) with NH₃-N adsorption reagent was revealed by FTIR spectra; the complex could be R-N-R-O-Zn-O-R-N-R and R-N-R-(O-Zn)₂. The kinetics and equilibrium of the NH₃-N adsorption onto the Zn(II)-loaded resin has been investigated. The effects of pH, reaction time, and temperature on NH₃-N removal from wastewater by Zn(II)-loaded resin were investigated, and the results showed that the maximum adsorption capacity reached 38.55 mg/g at pH 9.54 at 298 K in 240 min. The adsorption ability of the modified resin decreased with an increase in temperature. Moreover, the NH₃-N adsorption followed a pseudo-second-order kinetic process. The kinetic data demonstrated that the adsorption process might be limited by a variety of mechanisms. The study can provide the scientific foundation for the extensive application of a novel poly ligand exchanger-Zn(II)-loaded resin to remove NH₃-N from wastewater.

Development and evaluation of fluorescent gold nanoparticles

OBJECTIVE

It is difficult to identify the gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) intracellularly due to their non-fluorescent nature. Although gold can quench the fluorescence of any fluorophore, hence it is also difficult to combine gold with a fluorophore such as a semiconductor quantum dots (QDs). The aim of this study was to prepare a single fluorescent stable AuNPs combined with QDs (QDs-Au-NPs) which can be easily detected intracellularly.

METHODS

QDs-Au-NPs were prepared via a simple one-step process through controlling the spacing between them using polyethylene glycol (PEG) as space linker in the form of PEGylated QDs. Furthermore, the applicability of this system was evaluated after coating the particles with somatostatin citrate, SST, to active target somatostatin receptors (SSTRs), and identification of the internalized particles via confocal laser scanning spectroscopy.

RESULTS

The results showed that the produced Au shell has a thickness of 2.0 ± 0.2 nm and QDs-Au-NPs showed the same fluorescence intensity compared to the unmodified QDs. Additionally, a stable monodisperse QDs-Au-NPs coated with SST were prepared after coating with 11-Mercaptoundecanoic acid. Moreover, cellular uptake study in Human Caucasian breast adenocarcinoma cell lines showed that QDs-Au-SST-NPs could be detected easily using the confocal microscope. In addition, they showed a significant (p ≤ .05) internalization per cell compared to untreated QDs-Au-NPs as detected by flow cytometry.

CONCLUSION

It could be concluded that the produced QDs-Au-NPs has a strong fluorescence property like QDs which enable them to be easily detected after cells internalization.

Removal of ammonia from aqueous solutions by ligand exchange onto a Cu(ii)-loaded chelating resin: kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamics

A poly ligand exchanger (PLE), Cu(ii)-loaded chelating resin (ammonia adsorption reagent, named AMAR) was prepared to efficiently remove ammonia from solutions by ligand exchange.

Meta-analysis of cellular toxicity for cadmium-containing quantum dots

Understanding the relationships between the physicochemical properties of engineered nanomaterials and their toxicity is critical for environmental and health risk analysis. However, this task is confounded by material diversity, heterogeneity of published data and limited sampling within individual studies. Here, we present an approach for analysing and extracting pertinent knowledge from published studies focusing on the cellular toxicity of cadmium-containing semiconductor quantum dots. From 307 publications, we obtain 1,741 cell viability-related data samples, each with 24 qualitative and quantitative attributes describing the material properties and experimental conditions. Using random forest regression models to analyse the data, we show that toxicity is closely correlated with quantum dot surface properties (including shell, ligand and surface modifications), diameter, assay type and exposure time. Our approach of integrating quantitative and categorical data provides a roadmap for interrogating the wide-ranging toxicity data in the literature and suggests that meta-analysis can help develop methods for predicting the toxicity of engineered nanomaterials.

A new approach for bisphenol A detection employing fluorosurfactant-capped gold nanoparticle-amplified chemiluminescence from cobalt(II) and peroxymonocarbonate

In this work, we utilized the nonionic fluorosurfactant-capped gold nanoparticles (GNPs) as a novel chemiluminescence (CL) probe for the determination of trace bisphenol A. Bisphenol A can induce a sharp decrease in CL intensity from the GNP-Co(2+)-peroxymonocarbonate (HCO4(-)) system. Under the selected experimental conditions, a linear relationship was obtained between the CL intensity and the logarithm of concentration of bisphenol A in the range of 0.05-50 μM (R(2) = 0.9936), and the detection limit at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3 for bisphenol A was 10 nM. The applicability of the proposed method has been validated by determining bisphenol A in real polycarbonate samples with satisfactory results. The recoveries for bisphenol A in spiked samples were found to be between 94.4% and 105.0%. The relative standard deviation (RSD) for 12 repeated measurements of 0.5 μM bisphenol A was 2.2%. The proposed method described herein was simple, selective and obviated the need of extensive sample pretreatment.