Detection of hydrogen peroxide (HO) using a colorimetric sensor based on cellulose nanowhiskers and silver nanoparticles.

Hydrogen peroxide (HO) is an important compound for several industrial sectors, but it becomes harmful to human health under high concentrations. Thus, the development of simple, low cost and fast analytical methods capable to detect and monitor HO is fundamentally important. In the present study, we report a simple route for synthesizing silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in the presence of a nanostructured polysaccharide (cellulose nanowhiskers) to produce a hybrid material, which was employed as a colorimetric probe for HO detection. Our results revealed that AgNPs tend to experience catalytic decomposition when exposed to HO, causing a decrease of AgNPs absorption band at 410 nm in accordance with HO concentration. This decrease was linearly dependent on HO concentration (in the ranges 0.01-30 μM and 60-600 μM), yielding limits of detection of 0.014 μM and 112 μM, respectively. The easy-to-interpret HO sensor also proved to be suitable for real samples analysis even in the presence of other interfering substances.