Ultrasensitive Monitoring of Museum Airborne Pollutants using a Silver Nanoparticle Sensor Array.
2020
The
preservation of cultural heritage materials requires extremely
low concentration limits for indoor pollutants. This poses an unmet
challenge for monitoring the artwork in museums and on exhibit, especially
to do so in a cost-effective manner for a large number of locations.
A novel type of colorimetric sensor array based on printed inks of
10 nm silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) with several different capping
agents has been developed as an alternative to metal coupons or other
passive sampling indicators traditionally used by conservators. The
AgNP colorimetric sensor array, combined with digital imaging, offers
ultrasensitive dosimetric identification of acidic and oxidizing gases
and other air pollutants commonly found in a museum; the limits of
detection are sub-ppb for 1 h exposures. For an array of AgNP inks
with various capping agents, a unique and distinguishable color response
pattern is observed for each specific analyte. Excellent discrimination
among 11 gas pollutants over a wide range of concentrations was demonstrated
using standard chemometric methods. The observed changes in color
during pollutant exposure originate from the sintering of solid-state
nanoparticles that leads to changes in the localized surface plasmon
resonance. Such chemically induced sintering mechanism of nanoparticles
paves the way for a new class of field-deployable solid-state optical
sensor arrays. As an example, we have demonstrated the use of AgNP
sensor arrays for the nondestructive analysis of acidic volatile emission
from five types of printing paper, relevant for the conservation of
cultural heritage objects, including ancient manuscripts and books.
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