Effect of aggregated silver nanoparticles on luminol chemiluminescence system and its analytical application

Abstract

We found that after silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) aggregated, its catalytic activity on luminol CL reaction obviously changed, and the change characteristic was closely related to the sizes of AgNPs. UV–visible spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectra, zeta potential and transmission electron microscopy studies were carried out to investigate the CL effect mechanism. The different CL responses of aggregated AgNPs with different size were suggested to be due to the two effects of quantum size and electron density in nanoparticle’s conduction bands, and which one played a major role. The poisonous organic contaminants such as anilines, could induce the aggregation of AgNPs, were observed to affect effectively the luminol–H2O2–7nm and 15nm AgNPs CL systems and were detectable by use of a flow injection method with the enhanced or inhibited CL detection.