Simple Extraction and Ultrasensitive Determination of Nanoscale Silver from Environmental Waters

Abstract

Silver speciation is an important step for any program aiming to provide precise insights into the chemical transformation and evaluate the biological toxicity. Nonetheless, reliable speciation by easy-to-use and sensitive analytical approaches is still challenging for silver in natural waters at environmentally relevant levels. Herein, this study established a simple, fast, and robust analysis approach combining protein corona-mediated extraction with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis to selectively separate nanoscale silver (n-Ag) from waters and sensitively quantify its mass concentration. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was selected as the extractant to form protein corona on the n-Ag surface, followed by the selective extraction of n-Ag with addition of Na2S2O3. After the optimization of the extraction solvent concentration (i.e., 50 mg/L BSA), pH (i.e., 4.0), extraction time (i.e., 5 min), inorganic salt concentration (i.e., 1% m/v NaNO3), and incubation temperature and time (i.e., 80 °C and 45 min), acceptable recoveries of the spiked n-Ag (67.3–83.1%) were achieved in three environmental samples with a detection limit of 0.95 ng/L. The interference from natural humic acid, salinity, and other particles could be efficiently negligible. Transmission electron microscopy analysis showed that no size and/or shape changes were observed after extraction, making this approach attractive in practical application. Compared with the conventional cloud point extraction method, this new method exhibited superior selectivity to n-Ag at environmentally relevant levels in waters. Consequently, our work offers a promising way to highly enrich and sensitively quantify n-Ag in complex water matrices, which will allow the improvements to track the nanoparticles in the environment, promote the research on the environmental behaviors of n-Ag, and better evaluate its risk to the environment and human health.

Charged nanoplastics differentially affect the conjugative transfer of antibiotic resistance genes

“…Humic acid (HA) was used to represent NOM in the present study. According to the studies on HA in an aqueous environment, 50 a concentration of 5 mg L −1 was selected for the experiment. As shown in Fig.…”

Fractionation and preconcentration of silver nanoparticles at environmentally relevant concentrations through induced eco-corona formation and spICP-MS characterization

“…26 Besides, the final precipitate can be immiscible with water, hampering its dispersion and further sample analysis without another reagent, such as organic compounds, 28 leading to the same discussion about the surfactants. Recently, protein corona-induced extraction has been proposed as an alternative to extract and preconcentrate nanomaterials, [29][30][31] opening up new possibilities in NP extraction and preconcentration fields.…”

Speciation Analysis of Selenium Nanoparticles and Inorganic Selenium Species by Dual-Cloud Point Extraction and ICP-MS Determination

“…A series of extraction approaches have been developed to concentrate and isolate NMs, such as CPE, ligand-assisted extraction, micropore membrane-supported SPE, extraction on ion-exchange resins, and protein corona-mediated extraction . Among these methods, CPE has attracted extensive attention for its easy-handling and wide applicability.…”

“…A series of extraction approaches have been developed to concentrate and isolate NMs, such as CPE, ligand-assisted extraction, 30 micropore membrane-supported SPE, 31 extraction on ion-exchange resins, 32 and protein corona-mediated extraction. 33 Among these methods, CPE has attracted extensive attention for its easy-handling and wide applicability. The enrichment of NMs by CPE was first proposed by Liu et al in 2009, 34 and then, the CPE method was widely used for the separation and enrichment of Au nanoparticles (NPs), 35 Ag NPs, 36,37 fullerenes, TiO 2 NPs, 38 ZnO NPs, 39 and Fe 3 O 4 NPs.…”