A novel water pollution monitoring and treatment agent: Ag doped carbon nanoparticles for sensing dichromate, morphological analysis of Cr and sterilization

Drinking water shortage is a worldwide issue, so that the quality control and treatment of industrial sewage is very important. In this present work, Ag doped carbon nanoparticles (Ag-CDs) were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method, which could be used as an antibacterial and simultaneous detection of dichromate (Cr 2 O 7 2− ). The prepared Ag-CDs were characterized through high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The characterization results indicated that the diameter of Ag-CDs were distributed in a range of 2.6–6.0 nm (ca. 4.25 nm) with the functional groups such as OH, NH 2 and CONH in the structure. Cr 3+ and Cr 2 O 7 2− could be distinguished under 365 nm UV light or fluorospectrophotometer. The Ag-CDs nanoparticles was also applied to the detection of Cr 2 O 7 2- in real water samples. There exhibits excellent antibacterial performance to both Escherichia coli O157:H7 ( E. coli O157:H7) and Staphylococcus aureus ( S. aureus ) for Ag-CDs nanoparticles. E. coli O157:H7 or S. aureus was deal with 2 μg mL −1 of Ag-CDs nanoparticles under 5 min with a killing rate of 100%, respectively. As a novel dichromate-sensitive antibacterial, the Ag-CDs nanoparticles hold great promise to broaden application in the environment pollution and water purification.