Samuel Oluwatobi Oluwafemi
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Title: Sugar-reduced gelatin-capped silver nanoparticles with high selectivity for colorimetric sensing of Hg 2+ and Fe 2+ ions in the midst of other metal ions in aqueous solutions
Biography
Biography: Samuel Oluwatobi Oluwafemi
Abstract
Heavy metals enter the environment due to increasing industrial activities and have been found to be potential hazard to health and environment even at trace concentrations. Thus, high sensitive and selective determination of these heavy metal ions have received significant attention. We herein report green synthesis of dextrose and maltose-reduced silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) for colorimetric sensing of metal ions at different concentrations and reaction time. The synthesized Ag-NPs were characterized using UV-Visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), Fourier transform Infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS). Both maltose and dextrose-reduced Ag-NPs were highly sensitive and selective towards Hg 2+ and Fe 2+ ions over other metal ions. This was accompanied with a colour change from yellowish solution to colourless for Hg 2+ ions and from yellowish solution to greenish for Fe 2+ ions. Our findings also showed that dextrose-reduced Ag-NPs resulted in better colorimetric sensing of metal ions than maltose-reduced Ag-NPs. Both Ag-NPs solutions were highly sensitive and selective towards Hg 2+ ions at lower concentration up to 10-12 M with a linear regression coefficient value (R2) of 0.9792 and 0.9740 for maltose and dextrose reduced Ag-NPs respectively.