A novel spectrophotometric method based on plasmonic nanoparticles for nicotine detection

In this paper, a spectrophotometric method for nicotine detection based on plasmonic nanoparticles (AuNPs and AgNPs) is proposed. Due to their specific properties, plasmonic nanoparticles have become interesting to use in the development of sensitive analytical methods. The localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) absorption bands for AgNPs and AuNPs with a wavelength at 395.5 nm (A395.5) and 543.5 (A543.5) nm, respectively, are used for the detection. Experimental variables such as solvent type and pH were optimized so as to determine the optimum working conditions. The analytical calibration curve for both AgNPs and AuNPs based on spectrophotometric methods was prepared with nicotine concentrations range from 0.10 to 5.00 μM (R2 = 0.9903) and 0.001-0.300 μM (R2 = 0.9960), respectively. The detection limits were found to be 0.001 µM for AuNPs based method and 0.09 µM for AgNPs based method. The proposed nanoparticle-based spectrophotometric methods showed a good stability, selectivity and low detection limit.