The formation of zirconium hexacyanoferrate(ii) nanoparticles and their application in the highly sensitive determination of dopamine based on enhanced resonance Rayleigh scattering

Abstract

The formation of zirconium hexacyanoferrate(II) nanoparticles has been developed as a new resonance Rayleigh scattering (RRS) platform for the sensitive detection of trace amounts of dopamine (DA). The determination mechanism is based on dopamine reacting with hexacyanoferrate(III) ions to produce hexacyanoferrate(II) ions in acidic solution, which further react with zirconium ions to produce zirconium hexacyanoferrate(II) complexes. The zirconium hexacyanoferrate(II) complexes aggregate to form zirconium hexacyanoferrate(II) nanoparticles with an average diameter of about 50 nm. This aggregation can produce a strong RRS signal with the wavelength maximum at about 318 nm. This sensing system presented a good linear relationship between the increment of scattering intensity (ΔI_RRS) and the concentration of dopamine in the range of 0.03–1.3 μg mL⁻¹ with a correlation coefficient of 0.9996 and a low detection limit (at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3) of 0.392 ng mL⁻¹. Furthermore, this reaction system has been applied successfully to the detection of DA in a pharmaceutical preparation, and the recoveries were between 100.78% and 104.43%.