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Single-atom Fe catalytic amplification-gold nanosol SERS/RRS aptamer as platform for the quantification of trace pollutants

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Abstract

Bisphenol A (BPA), as a typical endocrine disruptor, poses a serious threat to human health. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a rapid, sensitive, and simple method for the determination of BPA. In this paper, based on the aptamer-mediated single-atom Fe carbon dot catalyst (SAFe) catalyzing the HAuCl4-ethylene glycol (EG) nanoreaction, a new SERS/RRS di-mode detection method for BPA was established. The results show that SAFe exhibits a strong catalytic effect on the HAuCl4-EG nanoreaction, which could generate purple gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with resonance Rayleigh scattering (RRS) signals and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effects. After the addition of BPA aptamer (Apt), it could encapsulate SAFe through intermolecular interaction, thus inhibiting its catalytic action, resulting in the reduction of AuNPs generated and the decrease of RRS and SERS signals of the system. With the addition of BPA, Apt was specifically combined with BPA, and SAFe was re-released to restore the catalytic ability; the generated AuNPs increased. As a result of this RRS and SERS signals of the system recovered, and their increment was linear with the concentration of BPA. Thus, the quantification of 0.1–4.0 nM (RRS) and 0.1–12.0 nM (SERS) BPA was realized, and the detection limits were 0.08 nM and 0.03 nM, respectively. At the same time, we used molecular spectroscopy and electron microscopy to study the SAFe-HAuCl4-ethylene glycol indicator reaction, and proposed a reasonable SAFe catalytic reaction mechanism.

Graphical abstract

Based on Apt-mediated SAFe catalysis gold nanoreaction amplification, a SERS/RRS di-mode analytical platform was established for targets such as BPA.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21667006, 21767004) and Innovation Project of Guangxi Graduate Education (YCSW2020096).

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  1. Dan Li and Chongning Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Ecology of Rare and Endangered Species and Environmental Protection (Guangxi Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control Theory and Technology, Guilin, 541004, China

    Dan Li, Chongning Li, Haolin Wang, Jiao Li, Yuxiang Zhao, Xin Jiang, Guiqing Wen, Aihui Liang & Zhiliang Jiang

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  1. Dan Li
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  2. Chongning Li
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  3. Haolin Wang
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  4. Jiao Li
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Correspondence to Aihui Liang or Zhiliang Jiang.

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Li, D., Li, C., Wang, H. et al. Single-atom Fe catalytic amplification-gold nanosol SERS/RRS aptamer as platform for the quantification of trace pollutants. Microchim Acta 188, 175 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-021-04828-8

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