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Research Article | Online first | Published: 01 April 2024

Portable hydrogel-based tri-channel fluorescence sensor array for visual detection of multiple explosives

Show Author's Information Wenxing Gao1,  Wenfeng Liu1,  Saijin Huang1,  Lin Wang1,  Yingying Jian2,  Yutong Li3,  Weiwei Wu2,  Li Shang1( )
State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Xidian University, Xi'an 710126, China
Honors College, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710119, China
Keywords:
fluorescence, gold nanoclusters, hydrogels, explosives, sensor array
Topics:
Fluorescence
Cite this article:
Gao W, Liu W, Huang S, et al. Portable hydrogel-based tri-channel fluorescence sensor array for visual detection of multiple explosives. Nano Research, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-024-6549-x
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

The identification and detection of various types of explosives are essential for human health and environmental monitoring. Array-based sensing approach offers significant advantages in detecting multi-analytes simultaneously, thereby holding great potential in identifying multiple explosives. Here, we report a tri-channel fluorescence array composed of three distinct fluorescence probes based on gold nanoclusters and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide with well-separated emission colors. Through the specific interactions of explosives with different fluorescent probes and the yielded response patterns, seven explosives can be successfully distinguished with 100% accuracy. In particular, the sensor array exhibits excellent performance in the quantitative analysis of individual explosive and the differentiation of multiple explosive mixtures. To facilitate the field detection towards practical application, the tri-channel fluorescence array was further integrated with polymer hydrogels. The fabricated portable hydrogel-based array sensors can not only visually identify seven different explosives by their distinct fluorescence color change, but also enable quantitative detection based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA) together with a smartphone. This study illustrates the great potential of hydrogel-based fluorescence sensor array as robust sensors for explosives, which also holds significant promise for the development of portable explosive devices towards practical application.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Portable hydrogel-based tri-channel fluorescence sensor array for visual detection of multiple explosives

Show Author's information Wenxing Gao1, Wenfeng Liu1, Saijin Huang1, Lin Wang1, Yingying Jian2, Yutong Li3, Weiwei Wu2, Li Shang1( )
State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Xidian University, Xi'an 710126, China
Honors College, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710119, China

Abstract

The identification and detection of various types of explosives are essential for human health and environmental monitoring. Array-based sensing approach offers significant advantages in detecting multi-analytes simultaneously, thereby holding great potential in identifying multiple explosives. Here, we report a tri-channel fluorescence array composed of three distinct fluorescence probes based on gold nanoclusters and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide with well-separated emission colors. Through the specific interactions of explosives with different fluorescent probes and the yielded response patterns, seven explosives can be successfully distinguished with 100% accuracy. In particular, the sensor array exhibits excellent performance in the quantitative analysis of individual explosive and the differentiation of multiple explosive mixtures. To facilitate the field detection towards practical application, the tri-channel fluorescence array was further integrated with polymer hydrogels. The fabricated portable hydrogel-based array sensors can not only visually identify seven different explosives by their distinct fluorescence color change, but also enable quantitative detection based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA) together with a smartphone. This study illustrates the great potential of hydrogel-based fluorescence sensor array as robust sensors for explosives, which also holds significant promise for the development of portable explosive devices towards practical application.

Keywords: fluorescence, gold nanoclusters, hydrogels, explosives, sensor array

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 23 December 2023
Revised: 23 January 2024
Accepted: 02 February 2024
Published: 01 April 2024

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2024

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21705129 and 22274131) and Shaanxi Fundamental Science Research Project for Chemistry & Biology (No. 22JHQ071).

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