Potential of deep eutectic solvents in silver nanoparticles fabrication for antibiotic residue detection

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have been well-known lately because of their exceptional thermal stability, polarity, and environmental friendliness. There have been numerous advancements in silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) fabrication, but no attention to the potential of DES in Ag NPs synthesis is considered and studied carefully. In this study, we present a novel strategy using a selected DES to fabricate Ag NPs in which AgNO 3 is chemically reduced by L-ascorbic acid. The results adapted from characterization methods demonstrate that Ag NPs are successfully fabricated, which are further used for the construction of the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate. The two analytes chosen for SERS quantitation are nitrofurantoin (NFT) and sulfadiazine (SDZ), which throughout the SERS technology, their residues can be traced at 10 -8 M for both NFT and SDZ. The highest enhancement factors (EFs) are competitive, 6.29Ï10 7 and 1.69Ï10 7 for NFT and SDZ, respectively. Besides, the linearity coefficients are extremely close to 1 in the range of 10 -8 M to 10 -3 M of concentration, and the SERS substrate shows attentional uniformity along with great selectivity. These powerful SERS performances coherently indicate that DESs have tremendous potential in nanomaterials fabrication applied for biosensors’ substrate construction.