Institute of Chemistry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel.
Ilse Katz Institute for Nanotechnology Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva 8410501, Israel.
ACS Sens. 2022 Jan 28;7(1):296-303. doi: 10.1021/acssensors.1c02324. Epub 2022 Jan 11.
Monitoring of nanoparticles (NPs) in air and aquatic environments is an unmet challenge accentuated by the rising exposure to anthropogenic or engineered NPs. The inherent heterogeneity in size, shape, and the stabilizing shell of NPs makes their selective recognition a daunting task. Thus far, only a few technologies have shown promise in detecting NPs; however, they are cumbersome, costly, and insensitive to the NPs morphology or composition. Herein, we apply an approach termed nanoparticle-imprinted matrices (NAIM), which is based on creating voids in a thin layer by imprinting NPs followed by their removal. The NAIM was formed on an interdigitated electrode (IDE) and used for the size-selective detection of silica NPs. Three- and 5-fold increases in capacitance were observed for the reuptake of NPs with similar diameter, compared to smaller or larger NPs, in air and liquid phase, respectively. En masse, the proposed approach lays the foundation for the emergence of field-effective, inexpensive, real-life applicable sensors that will allow online monitoring of NPs in air and liquids.
空气中和水生环境中的纳米颗粒（NPs）的监测是一项未满足的挑战，因为人为或工程纳米颗粒的暴露量不断增加。 NPs 的固有尺寸、形状和稳定壳的异质性使得对它们进行选择性识别成为一项艰巨的任务。到目前为止，只有少数几种技术在检测 NPs 方面显示出了希望；然而，它们繁琐、昂贵，并且对 NPs 的形态或组成不敏感。在此，我们应用了一种称为纳米颗粒印迹基质（NAIM）的方法，该方法基于通过印迹 NPs 然后将其去除在薄层中形成空隙。NAIM 形成在叉指电极（IDE）上，并用于对二氧化硅 NPs 进行尺寸选择性检测。在空气和液相中，对于具有相似直径的 NPs 的再摄取，观察到电容分别增加了 3 倍和 5 倍，与较小或较大的 NPs 相比。总的来说，所提出的方法为出现现场有效、廉价、实际适用的传感器奠定了基础，这些传感器将允许在线监测空气中和液体中的 NPs。
