Using the ionic liquid (IL) 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate as the extractant and methanol as the dispersion solvent, a dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method was developed to extract silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from environmental water samples.Parameters that influenced the extraction efficiency such as IL concentration, pH and extraction time were optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the highest extraction efficiency for AgNPs was above 90% with an enrichment factor of >90. The extracted AgNPs in the IL phase were identified by transmission electron microscopy and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, and quantified by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry after microwave digestion, with a detection limit of 0.01 μg/L. The spiked recovery of AgNPs was 84.4% with a relative standard deviation (RSD) of 3.8% (n = 6) at a spiked level of 5 μg/L, and 89.7% with a RSD of 2.2% (n = 6) at a spiked level of 300 μg/L, respectively. Commonly existed environmental ions had a very limited influence on the extraction efficiency. The developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of AgNPs in river water, lake water, and the influent and effluent of a wastewater treatment plant, with recoveries in the range of 71.0%-90.9% at spiking levels of 0.11-4.7 μg/L.
IntroductionSilver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been applied in various products, such as plastics, household textiles, medicine, and cosmetics, due to their excellent antimicrobial properties (Benn and Westerhoff, 2008;Blaser et al., 2008;Emam et al., 2013;Meyer et al., 2011;Quadros and Marr, 2011;Sondi and Salopek-Sondi, 2004;Shahverdi et al., 2007;Sallum et al., 2014;Tolaymat et al., 2010). As a result, AgNPs can be released into the environment, and result in potential risk to human beings and other biological organisms Khan et al., 2011;Losert et al., 2014;Sharma et al., 2014;Tian et al., 2013;Yu et al., 2012). It was reported that orally delivered AgNPs induced deleterious effects on the liver and heart for mammals (Elle et al., 2013). Additionally, AgNPs could accumulate and transport along the food chain (Zhao and Wang, 2010). However, the mechanism of AgNP toxicity is not clear, although it was reported that the morphological A v a i l a b l e o n l i n e a t w w w . s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m ScienceDirect w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / j e s characteristics such as surface charge, particle size and shape were related to their toxicity (Badawy et al., 2011;Burkowska-But et al., 2014;Carlson et al., 2008;Pal et al., 2007). This lack of knowledge could be ascribed to the complexity of nanoparticles themselves, as well as the lack of methods that are capable of monitoring the trace AgNPs from complex environmental and biological samples without disturbing their characteristics (Farré et al., 2011).4 1 ( 2 0 1 6 ) 2 1 1 -2 1To date, several methods have been developed for the separation and determination of AgNPs such as field flow fractionation, anodic particle coulometry, and hydrodynamic chromato...