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Inconspicuous Reactions Identified by Improved Precision of Plasmonic Scattering Dark-Field Microscopy Imaging Using Silver Shell-Isolated Nanoparticles as Internal References
journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-28, 00:00 authored by Wei Feng, Wei He, Jun Zhou, Xiao Ying Gu, Yuan Fang Li, Cheng Zhi HuangInvestigating
a reaction that is inconspicuously weak, slow, or
coexists with other fast reactions is interesting since that can supply
a capability to find new reactions or explore indecisive mechanisms,
but the strategies for the investigations are still greatly limited.
Herein, we apply the strategy of “finding from the data”
to discuss inconspicuous reactions through improving the confidence
level of detected signals. In dark-field microscopy (DFM) imaging
analysis, plasmonic nanoprobes, such as silver nanoparticles (AgNPs),
have been applied at a single nanoparticle level with high sensitivity,
but correspondingly, the deviations caused by instrumental and operational
errors are inevitable. Thus, silver shell-isolated nanoparticles (AgSHINs)
as an internal reference (IR) are introduced to calibrate the scattering
signals of AgNPs probe during the reactions. Two calibration factors,
α and β, are used to calibrate the plasmonic scattering
intensity and RGB values of the AgNPs probe of the DFM images, respectively,
making the confidence level of the DFM imaging analysis greatly improved
and, thus, supplying a possibility to monitor inconspicuously weak
or slow reactions. As a proof of concept, the inconspicuous amalgamation
of AgNP probes bathed in dilute solution of mercury higher than 1.0
× 10–10 mol/L was successfully monitored. In
the same way, we identified the very weak oxidation process of AgNP
probes by dissolved oxygen in water. These successful monitorings
of inconspicuous weak or slow reactions, which might be possible to
be regarded as detection deviations mistakenly, show that the use
of AgSHINs as an IR can provide a precise method to discern or discover
inconspicuous slow reactions in nature through the DFM imaging analysis.