The goal of the proposal entitled Direct, sensitive and selective fluorescence “turn-off” detection of metallic contaminants from water using photoluminescent gold nanoclusters is to implement an optical spectroscopic method, based on probing the photoluminescence of an attractive class of gold nanosensors (i.e. gold nanoclusters (AuNCs)), into a portable spectroscopic device suitable for sensitive and specific detection of two important metallic contaminants (i.e. Fe3+ and Cu2+) from real water sources. Our one-step approach consists in monitoring and quantifing the quenching of the intrinsic PL signal of AuNCs as a consequence of aggregation induced by specific interaction of metallic ions with the surface ligand of AuNCs (i.e. aminoacids) with affinity for the selected metallic contaminats.

The two key objectives of this project are:

(1) to assess the sensibility and specificity of synthesized aminoacid-stabilized AuNCs as sensors for the detection of Fe3+ and Cu2+ in solution via PL quenching and colorimetric observation and

(2) to perform sensitive and selective detection of metallic contaminants (i.e. Fe3+ and Cu2+) from real water samples via fluorescence “turn-off” mechanism of intrinsic photoluminescence of AuNCs.