Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2014; 140724090802003.
Tushar Kumeria, Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman, Abel Santos, Josep Ferré-Borrull, Lluís F. Marsal, Dusan Losic.
School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005,Australia &
Departament d’Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Avda Països Catalans 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain.
Abstract
Herein, we present an ultrasensitive, cost-competitive, and portable optical sensing system for detecting ionic mercury in environmental water. This analytical system combines structurally engineered and chemically modified nanoporous anodic alumina rugate filters (NAA-RFs) with reflection spectroscopy (RfS). The sensing performance of the proposed system is assessed through several tests, establishing its sensing performance (i.e., linear working range from 1 to 100 μM of Hg2+, low limit of detection 1 μM of Hg2+ ions (i.e., 200 ppb), and sensitivity of 0.072 nm μM–1), chemical selectivity (i.e., exposure to different metal ions Co2+, Mg2+, Ni2+, Cu2+, Pb2+, Fe3+, Ca2+, Cr6+, and Ag+) and metal ions binding mechanism (i.e., fitting to Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models). Furthermore, the detection of Hg2+ ions in tap and environmental water (River Torrens) is successfully carried out, demonstrating the suitability of this system for developing environmental point-of-analysis systems.
