Research Highlight

How far can you go?

Realizing limits of detection is an ongoing quest among scientists of various disciplines and this has implications to national security, safe drinking water, etc. Ammu Mathew and colleagues of the Department of Chemistry have shown that using unusual nanoparticles, called mesoflowers, sub-zeptomoles of trinitrotoluene (TNT), an explosive, can be detected selectively. The mesoflower emits red fluorescence due to the presence of atomically precise clusters attached on its surface. But in presence of tiny amounts of TNT, the luminescence turns to green. The sensor is so specific that even a closely similar molecule such as dinitrotoluene will not make the senor work. The limit of detection turned out to be just nine molecules. The same strategy has been used to detect hazardous mercury ions in water. This was reported in one of the top-most journals of chemistry, Angewandte Chemie.

Research publication is here.

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