Synergetic enhancement of gold nanoparticles and 2-mercaptobenzothiazole as highly-sensitive sensing strategy for tetrabromobisphenol A

Various gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were in-situ prepared on the electrode surface through electrochemical reduction under different potentials such as −0.60, −0.50, −0.40, −0.30 and −0.20 V. The reduction potentials heavily affect the surface morphology and electrochemical activity of AuNPs such as effective area and catalytic ability, as confirmed using atomic force microscopy and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The electrochemical behaviors of tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), a widely-existed pollutant with severe adverse health effects, were studied. The oxidation activity of TBBPA enhances obviously on the surface of AuNPs, and the signal improvements of TBBPA show difference on the prepared AuNPs. Interestingly, the existence of 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT) further improves the oxidation signals of TBBPA on AuNPs. The synergetic enhancement effects of AuNPs and MBT were studied using cyclic voltammetry and chronocoulometry. The numerous nano-scaled gold particles together with the strong hydrophobic interaction between TBBPA and the assembled MBT on AuNPs jointly provide highly-effective accumulation for TBBPA. As a result, a sensitive and simple electrochemical method was developed for the direct determination of TBBPA, with detection limit of 0.12 μg L(−1) (0.22 nM). The practical applications in water samples manifest that this new sensing system is accurate and feasible.