Abstract
Methylmercury (MeHg) as an organometallic is much more toxic than inorganic mercury. Nevertheless, building an organometallic assay remains a great challenge due to the coexisting inorganic metal ions. Herein, we synthesize a gold nanozyme (NP-CDs/AuNPs) via using norepinephrine-based carbon dots (NP-CDs) as reducing agent. As expected, NP-CDs/AuNPs exhibits enhanced peroxidase-like activity in the presence of MeHg to form Au-Hg amalgam (Au@HgNPs). Compared with the NP-CDs/AuNPs, the formed Au@HgNPs could oxidize weak Raman-active reporter o-phenylendiamine (OPD) into the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity 2,3-diaminephenazine (DAP) with a single characteristic SERS peak of C-Hg bond at 477 cm−1. The results of UV–vis–kinetics and SERS-kinetics models demonstrated the better affinity between Au@HgNPs and the substrate than that of NP-CDs/AuNPs, indicating the high sensitivity SERS signal intensity response. The SERS-enhancing mechanism explicitly revealed that the generation of charge transfer complex Au@HgNPs further increases the “hot spot” effect. The work provides guidance in designing the ultrasensitive and specific analysis of organometallic compound via SERS.
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