Issue 48, 2018, Issue in Progress

New portable smartphone-based PDMS microfluidic kit for the simultaneous colorimetric detection of arsenic and mercury

Abstract

A smartphone-based microfluidic platform was developed for point-of-care (POC) detection using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of gold nanoparticles (GNPs). The simultaneous colorimetric detection of trace arsenic and mercury ions (As3+ and Hg2+) was performed using a new image processing application (app). To achieve this goal, a microfluidic kit was fabricated using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate with the configuration of two separated sensing regions for the quantitative measurement of the color changes in GNPs to blue/gray. To fabricate the microfluidic kit, a Plexiglas mold was cut using a laser based on the model obtained from AutoCAD and Comsol outputs. The colorimetric signals originated from the formation of nanoparticle aggregates through the interaction of GNPs with dithiothreitol – 10,12-pentacosadiynoic acid (DTT-PCDA) and lysine (Lys) in the presence of As3+ and Hg2+ ions. This assembly exhibited the advantages of simplicity, low cost, and high portability along with a low volume of reagents and multiplex detection. Heavy Metals Detector (HMD), as a new app for the RGB reader, was programmed for an Android smartphone to quantify colorimetric analyses. Compared with traditional image processing, this app provided significant improvements in sensitivity, time of analysis, and simplicity because the color intensity is measured through a new normalization equation by converting RGB to an Integer system. As a simple, real-time, and portable analytical kit, the fabricated sensor could detect low concentrations of As3+ (710 to 1278 μg L−1) and Hg2+ (10.77 to 53.86 μg L−1) ions in water samples at ambient conditions.

Graphical abstract: New portable smartphone-based PDMS microfluidic kit for the simultaneous colorimetric detection of arsenic and mercury

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 May 2018
Accepted
17 Jul 2018
First published
30 Jul 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2018,8, 27091-27100

New portable smartphone-based PDMS microfluidic kit for the simultaneous colorimetric detection of arsenic and mercury

A. Motalebizadeh, H. Bagheri, S. Asiaei, N. Fekrat and A. Afkhami, RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 27091 DOI: 10.1039/C8RA04006K

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