The method presented here provides a direct way to determine mercury in tap water samples at the parts-per-trillion level. Its outstanding selectivity and sensitivity results from the well-known amalgamation process that occurs between mercury and gold. The entire procedure takes less than 10 min. No sample separation or sample preconcentration is required. The only step prior to mercury determination consists of mixing the water sample with a gold nanorod solution in sodium borohydride. The analytical figures of merit demonstrate precise and accurate analysis at the parts-per-trillion level. The limit of detection (6.6 x 10(-13) g x L(-1)) shows excellent potential for monitoring ultralow levels of mercury in water samples.

Preparing crystalline materials that produce tunable organic-based multicolor emission is a challenge due to the inherent inability to control the packing of organic molecules in the solid state. Utilizing multivariate, high-symmetry metal–organic frameworks, MOFs, as matrices for organic-based substitutional solid solutions allows for the incorporation of multiple fluorophores with different emission profiles into a single material. By combining nonfluorescent links with dilute mixtures of red, green, and blue fluorescent links, we prepared zirconia-type MOFs and found that the bulk materials exhibit features of solution-like fluorescence. Our study found that MOFs with a fluorophore link concentration of around 1 mol % exhibit fluorescence with decreased inner filtering, demonstrated by changes in spectral profiles, increased quantum yields, and lifetime dynamics expected for excited-state proton-transfer emitters. Our findings enabled us to prepare organic-based substitutional solid solutions with tunable chromaticity regulated only by the initial amounts of fluorophores. These materials emit multicolor and white light with high quantum yields (∼2–14%), high color-rendering indices (>93), long shelf life, and superb hydrolytic stability at ambient conditions.

A novel alternative is presented for the extraction and preconcentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from water samples. The new approachwhich we have named solid-phase nanoextraction (SPNE)takes advantage of the strong affinity that exists between PAH and gold nanoparticles. Carefully optimization of experimental parameters has led to a high-performance liquid chromatography method with excellent analytical figures of merit. Its most striking feature correlates to the small volume of water sample (500 microL) for complete PAH analyses. The limits of detection ranged from 0.9 (anthracene) to 58 ng.L (-1) (fluorene). The relative standard deviations at medium calibration concentrations vary from 3.2 (acenaphthene) to 9.1% (naphthalene). The analytical recoveries from tap water samples of the six regulated PAH varied from 83.3 +/- 2.4 (benzo[ k]fluoranthene) to 95.7 +/- 4.1% (benzo[ g,h,i]perylene). The entire extraction procedure consumes less than 100 microL of organic solvents per sample, which makes it environmentally friendly. The small volume of extracting solution makes SPNE a relatively inexpensive extraction approach.

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