Issue 1, 2019

Electrochemically assisted flexible lanthanide upconversion luminescence sensing of heavy metal contamination with high sensitivity and selectivity

Abstract

Heavy metal contamination in water can pose lethal threats to public health; therefore it is highly desired to develop a rapid and sensitive sensor for monitoring water quality. Owing to their superior optical features, upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) are widely explored to detect metal ions based on resonance energy transfer to dye quenchers. However, these schemes heavily rely on the optical properties of the molecules, which limits the flexibility of the probe design. Herein, a flexible carbon fiber cloth/UCNP composite probe was fabricated for sensing copper(II) (Cu2+) ions and an electrochemical (E-chem) technique was implemented for the first time to enhance its sensing performance. By applying 0.3 V on the composite probe, Cu2+ ions can be effectively accumulated through oxidation, yielding a remarkable improvement in the selectivity and sensitivity. A more outstanding detection limit of the sensor was achieved at 82 ppb under the E-chem assistance, with 300-fold enhancement compared to the detection without the E-chem effect. This sensing approach can be an alternative to molecular quenchers and open up new possibilities for simple, rapid and portable sensing of metal ions.

Graphical abstract: Electrochemically assisted flexible lanthanide upconversion luminescence sensing of heavy metal contamination with high sensitivity and selectivity

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
06 6 2018
Accepted
04 7 2018
First published
20 8 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2019,1, 265-272

Electrochemically assisted flexible lanthanide upconversion luminescence sensing of heavy metal contamination with high sensitivity and selectivity

Y. Wong, S. Pang, M. Tsang, Y. Liu, H. Huang, S. Yu and J. Hao, Nanoscale Adv., 2019, 1, 265 DOI: 10.1039/C8NA00012C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements