Bio-Fabricated Gold and Silver Nanoparticle Based Plasmonic Sensors for Detection of Environmental Pollutants: An Overview

Abstract

Water resources of our earth is currently facing a serious challenge due to human activities including industrial development, agricultural revolution, urban growth and deforestation. The first step for pollutant removal is obviously their detection in water which requires use of various well known instrumentation techniques or use of sensors. Of all the different types of sensors, gold and silver nanoparticle based colorimetric/plasmonic nano-sensors are particularly noteworthy because of their simplicity and low cost. These nano-sensors are based on principle of SPR, an optical phenomenon immensely dependent on characteristics of the nanoparticles. Noble metal nanoparticles are widely chosen for colorimetric sensing application as their SPR absorbance lie in the visible region of spectrum rendering unique colors to them. Also, they are easy to synthesize, easy to functionalize, biocompatible and stable. In this detection technique, the presence of a pollutant is revealed by a distinct, visual color change and can also be quantified using a UV-Visible Spectrophotometer. Sustainable chemistry being one of the focal points of modern chemistry research, green synthesis of nanoparticles, particularly noble metal nanoparticles such as gold and silver have attracted considerable attention in last decade. Although gold and silver nanoparticles based optical sensor have been summarized in various reviews over last few years, colorimetric nano-sensors synthesized by green methods have found little discussion in scientific literature. This critical review aims to connect this gap by portraying this sparsely explored area of application of biosynthesized silver and gold nanoparticles and thus will assist the researchers working in this field.

Research Highlight

• Green synthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles

• Colorimetric detection of environmental pollutants

• Metal mediated aggregation

• Redox etching

• Selectivity, sensitivity and Limit of Detection

Keywords:

• Biosynthesis
• colorimetric sensor
• silver nanoparticle
• gold nanoparticle
• UV-visible spectroscopy

Acknowledgement

The authors are thankful to Sharda University for financial support.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.