Summary
Heavy metals are a major public health concern and their on-site detection in water supplies is not well served by existing lab techniques. We develop a new multi-modal platform comprising functionalized quantum dots of two-dimensional materials (2D-QDs) for the sensing of four highly-toxic heavy metal pollutants (arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury). The zero-dimensional nature of quantum dots brings essential properties necessary for fluorescence-based chemical sensing of heavy metals in the field. We focus on one type of 2D material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which is a direct band gap semiconductor when produced as a monolayer. To fabricate and functionalize the 2D-QDs, we expose flakes of MoS2 suspended in a solution to a pulsed laser. This technique allows us to simultaneously functionalize the 2D-QDs, so that they become sensitive to a specific pollutant metal, and control their fluorescence wavelength, so that 2D-QDs functionalized for different target metals will produce distinguishable optical signals. By combining multiple types of functionalized 2D-QDs into a single solution capable of simultaneously identifying various heavy metals, we expect to advance a range of applications that require a field-deployable solution. These include for example, rapid contaminant point source identification, and water analysis of heavy metals in developing countries where conventional equipment is too costly.
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