Development of luminol-based chemiluminescence approach for ultrasensitive sensing of Hg(II) using povidone-I2 protected gold nanoparticles as an efficient coreactant.

In this work, we fabricated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) capped with both polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) and iodine (I2) to act as efficient chemiluminescent coreactants for luminol. AuNPs synthesis was based on the direct chemical reduction of Au3+ with NaBH4 in the presence of PVP-I2 complex. The successful synthesis of PVP-I2@AuNPs was confirmed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-vis spectrophotometry. Chemiluminescence (CL) intensity of luminol was greatly enhanced, upon its chemical reaction with chemisorbed I2 on AuNPs surfaces owing to the excellent catalytic activity of AuNPs. The PVP-I2@AuNPs/luminol CL sensing system was successfully applied for determination of Hg2+ ions and the results displayed linearity in a wide range from 0.5 to 2000 nM and an ultrasensitive response to 1.0 nM Hg2+. The detection limit of Hg2+ ions was 0.1 nM, which was 100 times lower than the limit value (10 nM) defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in drinkable water. This ultrasensitive luminogenic system for Hg2+ detection also exhibited excellent selectivity among 13 types of metals, suggesting that the luminol/PVP-I2@AuNPs system is a promising sensor for real-time detection of Hg2+. Graphical abstract.