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Exploring visible light enhancement for sensing: an azo-dye decorated gold nanoantenna monitored with a smartphone app

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Abstract

Optical sensors can be used to detect a variety of substances ranging from diagnostics on biological samples to the detection of hazardous substances. This type of sensor can be a valuable alternative to more complex analytical techniques, being fast and requiring little to no sample preparation at the expense of the reusability of the device. Here, we show the construction of a colorimetric nanoantenna sensor using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) embedded in poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and decorated with the methyl orange (MO) azo dye (AuNP@PVA@MO) that is potentially reusable. As a proof of concept, we apply this sensor to detect H2O2 both visually and using a smartphone-based app for colorimetric measurements. Furthermore, through chemometric modeling of the app data, we can reach a detection limit of 0.0058% (1.70 mmolL−1) of H2O2 while being able to visually detect changes on the sensor. Our results reinforce the combination of nanoantenna sensors with chemometric tools as guidelines for sensor design. Finally, this approach can lead to novel sensors allowing for the visual detection of analytes in complex samples and their quantification using colorimetry.

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Acknowledgements

We are also thankful to professors M. L. A. Temperini e V. H. Paschoal (USP, Brazil) for their valuable advice in this work.

Funding

This work was supported by the Brazilian agency CNPq (Grant 405087/2021–7) and by the Scientific Initiation program at UFABC. The authors are grateful to the Multiuser Central Facilities at UFABC for the experimental support and to the Laboratory of Molecular Spectroscopy of the Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo (USP, Brazil), where the Raman/SERS spectra were measured (FAPESP, grant 2016/21070–5).

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  1. Federal University of ABC, Av. Dos Estados, 5001, Santo André, SP, 09210-580, Brazil

    Késsia Nattaly Oliveira dos Santos & Mónica Benicia Mamián-López

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  1. Késsia Nattaly Oliveira dos Santos
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  2. Mónica Benicia Mamián-López
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Correspondence to Mónica Benicia Mamián-López.

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Published in the topical collection Young Investigators in (Bio-)Analytical Chemistry 2023 with guest editors Zhi-Yuan Gu, Beatriz Jurado-Sánchez, Thomas H. Linz, Leandro Wang Hantao, Nongnoot Wongkaew, and Peng Wu.

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dos Santos, K.N.O., Mamián-López, M.B. Exploring visible light enhancement for sensing: an azo-dye decorated gold nanoantenna monitored with a smartphone app. Anal Bioanal Chem 415, 4459–4466 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-023-04632-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-023-04632-8

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