Modified nanocellulose as promising material for the extraction of gold nanoparticles

Abstract

Increasing number of engineering nanoparticles (NPs) in consumer products is unstoppable even after the toxic effect of metallic-based nanomaterials stated more than a decade ago; thus, selective methods for detecting metallic NPs are highly demanded and of great importance. A simple and rapid approach for detecting gold NPs (AuNPs) using ecofriendly sulfonated nanocellulose (s-NC) as sorbent material is described. The interaction between s-NC and AuNP is based on the affinity of sulfur atoms towards metals. We found that the use of cationic surfactant substantially benefitted the extraction and preconcentration of AuNPs by virtue of the NP stabilization. Good linear correlations were found in a concentration range spanned from 7 to 20 μg/mL with a detection limit of 0.26 μg/mL. Furthermore, the proposed method was successfully applied to detect AuNPs in presence of other nanowastes, opening new opportunities of creating functional materials to collect and store nanoobjects for further uses. Further experiments are directed for reaching a generalized method towards the analysis of a bigger variety of NPs covering the trending topic third facet of the analytical nanoscience and nanotechnology.