Department of Chemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi 39217, United States.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2010 Dec;2(12):3455-60. doi: 10.1021/am1005139. Epub 2010 Nov 15.
TNT is one of the most commonly used nitro aromatic explosives for landmines of military and terrorist activities. As a result, there is an urgent need for rapid and reliable methods for the detection of trace amount of TNT for screenings in airport, analysis of forensic samples, and environmental analysis. Driven by the need to detect trace amounts of TNT from environmental samples, this article demonstrates a label-free, highly selective, and ultrasensitive para-aminothiophenol (p-ATP) modified gold nanoparticle based dynamic light scattering (DLS) probe for TNT recognition in 100 pico molar (pM) level from ethanol:acetonitile mixture solution. Because of the formation of strong π-donor-acceptor interaction between TNT and p-ATP, para-aminothiophenol attached gold nanoparticles undergo aggregation in the presence of TNT, which changes the DLS intensity tremendously. A detailed mechanism for significant DLS intensity change has been discussed. Our experimental results show that TNT can be detected quickly and accurately without any dye tagging in 100 pM level with excellent discrimination against other nitro compounds.
TNT 是一种常用于军事和恐怖活动地雷的硝基芳香炸药。因此，迫切需要快速可靠的方法来检测痕量 TNT，以便在机场进行筛选、法医样本分析和环境分析。本文受从环境样品中检测痕量 TNT 的需求驱动，展示了一种无标记、高选择性和超灵敏的基于对氨基苯硫酚（p-ATP）修饰的金纳米粒子的动态光散射（DLS）探针，用于在乙醇：乙腈混合溶液中以 100 皮摩尔（pM）的水平识别 TNT。由于 TNT 和 p-ATP 之间形成了强的π-供体-受体相互作用，在存在 TNT 的情况下，连接到对氨基苯硫酚的金纳米粒子发生聚集，这极大地改变了 DLS 强度。已经讨论了 DLS 强度显著变化的详细机制。我们的实验结果表明，TNT 可以在 100 pM 水平下快速准确地检测，无需任何染料标记，并且对其他硝基化合物具有出色的辨别能力。
