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. 2023 Oct 23:1279:341846.
doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2023.341846. Epub 2023 Sep 23.

Silver ion-imprinted magnetic adsorbent hyphenated to single particle-ICP-MS for separation and analysis of dissolved silver and silver nanoparticles in antibacterial gel extracts

Meng Zhang  1 , Han Wang  2 , Yiwei Wu  1 , Xiaoxiao Yu  3
Affiliations

Silver ion-imprinted magnetic adsorbent hyphenated to single particle-ICP-MS for separation and analysis of dissolved silver and silver nanoparticles in antibacterial gel extracts

Meng Zhang et al. Anal Chim Acta. .

Abstract

Background: Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are extensively used in various applications, but their reactivity leads to oxidative dissolution into Ag(I). When dealing with real samples involving Ag NPs, it is inevitable to encounter situations where both Ag NPs and Ag(I) coexist. Single particle-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) is a valuable technique for nanoparticle size characterization. However, the presence of coexisting dissolved ions strongly interferes with the accuracy of particle size analysis using SP-ICP-MS. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a reliable separation analysis method to accurately measure both Ag NPs and Ag(I).

Results: In this study, we synthesized a silver ion-imprinted magnetic adsorbent with high adsorption capacity (149 mg g-1) and rapid adsorption kinetics (30 min) at both μg L-1 and mg L-1 concentration. The adsorbent selectively adsorbs Ag(I) at pH 7 while hardly adsorbing Ag NPs. It is reusable for more than 5 cycles after regeneration. Using this magnetic adsorbent prior to SP-ICP-MS, we accurately determined the sizes of standard Ag NPs in agreement with the size determined by transmission electron microscopy. The detection limit of particle size and number concentrations of Ag NPs was 12.6 nm and 6.3 × 105 particles L-1. Moreover, we successfully applied the developed method to analyze Ag(I) and Ag NPs in antibacterial gel extracts and validated its accuracy through acid digestion-ICP-MS, TEM, and spiking experiments.

Significance and novelty: Direct SP-ICP-MS analysis in the presence of Ag(I) led to a high baseline, obscuring signals from smaller Ag NPs. Our method of selectively removing Ag(I) substantially improves the accuracy of Ag NPs detection via SP-ICP-MS in the antibacterial gel extracts (e.g. from 48.26 to 35.67 nm). Compared to other approaches used in SP-ICP-MS, our method has a higher adsorption capacity, allowing for better tolerance of coexisting Ag(I).

Keywords: Dissolved silver; Magnetic ion imprinted polymers; Silver nanoparticles; Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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