Functionalized Silver Nanoparticles for Rapid Detection of Mn2+ Employing a Smartphone Platform

Abstract

AbstractThis study describes the development of a simple, reliable, and low‐cost method to rapidly detect Mn2+ based on co‐functionalized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and the smartphone platform to be applied as an on‐site device in the field. The co‐functionalized AgNPs was investigated with other cations (Al3+, Ba2+, Ca2+, Cd2+, Co2+, Cr3+, Cu2+, Fe2+, Fe3+, K+, Li+, Mg2+, Na+, Ni2+, Pb2+ and Zn2+) at pH 3–10. The results showed that this functionalized AgNPs was selectively binded to Mn2+ at pH 10, which caused the color of the solution changing from yellow to orange‐red and can be measured by the smartphone application called PhotoMetrix. This application was used to measure color intensities based on RGB (red, green, blue) values and converted into Mn2+ concentration by using multivariate calibration curves within 10 minutes. The smartphone detection showed a high selectivity of AgNPs with Mn2+ and provided a positive coefficient correlation between the intensity of channel R and the concentration of Mn2+ with a linear range of 4.0×10−5–2.0×10−4 M (R2=0.9814) and a limit of detection of 2.7×10−5 M. Furthermore, the quantification of Mn2+ in real water samples can be successfully applied by this method. The obtained results were in close agreement with those obtained with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP‐OES). Therefore, the development of a colorimetric system based on a smartphone system device was found to be feasible and reliable for on‐site Mn2+ detection in the real water samples.