Sharif Digital Repository

Spectrophotometric determination of arginine by aggregation of spherical Au nanoparticles Arginine has been classified as a ‘semi-essential’ or ‘conditionally-essential’ amino acid. This amino acid plays a crucial role in many biological path ways. Hence, its determination in biological body fluids such as blood plasma and urine is important for clinical diagnosis of various diseases. Herein we report the development of a sensitive colorimetric method for the determination of arginine based on aggregation of the citrate capped gold nanoparticles (Au NPs). Reaction contains replacement of citrate ions with guanidinium groups of arginine followed by establishing a chemical bond between amino... 

4-Hydroxy-2-mercapto-6-methylpyrimidine (MTU), is a drug from thiouracil antithyroid family which inhibits thyroid hormone synthesis and is generally used to remedy hyperthyroidism in gestation and liver disease. On the other hand, MTU has been applied to animals to gain higher weight . Since remaining of thyreostatic drugs in eatable animal tissues could be a risk to human health, their use in animal products was prohibited in the European Union in 1981.Based on these reasons, the need for an analytical procedure capable of determining MTU is of great importance. We report herein the development of a highly sensitive colorimetric method for the detection of MTU utilizing citrate capped gold... 

Development of simple and rapid approaches for identification of pesticides has been known as a critical demand, due to the broad usage of pesticides and their harmful effects on mammals. Herein, we have introduced a silver nanoparticle (AgNP) based colorimetric sensor array for simultaneous identification of Azinphosmethyl (AM) and Phosalone (PS). In the presence of the target pesticides, unmodified AgNPs at various pHs (4.5, 5.5 and 9.5) showed different aggregation behaviours. As a result of aggregation, the color and UV-Vis spectra of AgNPs changed which led to distinct patterns for AM and PS. The aggregation induced spectral changes of AgNPs were used to identify AM and PS with the help... 

Detection of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) as an explosive has been of great interest because of public safety and military concerns. Here, we have presented a simple, selective and sensitive colorimetric method for direct detection of PETN. The gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were first exposed to arginine which has primary amines in its structure. Primary amines from arginine as electron donors could strongly interact with electron deficient –NO2 group of PETN. Also, hydrogen bonding could happen between the –NO2 group of PETN and –NH2 group of arginine molecules. Therefore, selective aggregation of AuNPs happened because of the donor-acceptor and hydrogen bonding interactions. Due to the... 

Due to the widespread use of pesticides and their harmful effects on humans and wildlife, monitoring their residual amounts in crops is critically essential but still challenging regarding the development of high-throughput approaches. Herein, a colorimetric sensor array has been proposed for discrimination and identification of triazole fungicides using monometallic and bimetallic silver and gold nanoparticles. Aggregation-induced behavior of AgNPs, AuNPs and Au-AgNPs in the presence of four triazole fungicides produced a fingerprint response pattern for each analyte. Pattern recognition methods, including linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and hierarchical cluster analysis, have been... 

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is of great importance in numerous fields such as pharmaceuticals, mining, textile, environmental and food industry. Therefore, the development of low cost, on-site, and uncomplicated H2O2 sensors are of high interest. To date, colloidal quantum dots (QDs) have been used to detect H2O2 based on the quenching of fluorescence intensity in a single wavelength. However, intensity of fluorescent signal could be easily disturbed by various factors. To overcome these undesirable effects, here, a ratiometric sensor has been developed by adding a second fluorophore (as reference) to QDs. For this purpose TGA-capped CdTe QDs were prepared. To detect H2O2, the ratiometric... 

The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent rising demand for purchasing alcohol-based sanitizers led to a remarkable prosperity in supplying these hygiene products. Hence, the development of a straightforward and efficient analytical strategy for discrimination of antiseptic alcohols including methanol, ethanol and isopropanol is of great importance. By exploiting the alcohol-sensitive membranes of probiotic bacteria, this research aims to develop a colorimetric sensor array for discriminating methanol, ethanol and isopropanol. In this design, the aggregation of citrate-capped gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) on the thiol-modified surface of two probiotic bacteria, including... 

The exitance of a certain amount of halide ions including Chloride (Cl-), Bromide (Br-) and Iodide (I-) in human body is crucial for ensuring health. However, exposure to high levels of these ions can cause diseases, such as goiter and neurological disfunction. As a result, the development of a simple and efficient analytical method for determining the aforesaid halide ions is so important. Triangular silver nanoparticles (TSNPs) display wide color variations due to their tunable plasmonic properties dependent on the aspect ratio of the nanoparticles. Hence, designing a colorimetric sensor array using the optical properties of TSNPs for determination and discrimination of halide ions is of... 

Neurotransmitters can be classified depending on their molecular structure, such as monoamines, which include dopamine (DA), epinephrine (EP), norepinephrine (NE), and levodopa (L-dopa), which acts as a metabolic precursor for dopamine. Simultaneous identification and measurement of these neurotransmitters in human bodily fluids is crucial for the early identification of various disorders. Our current study relies on gold nanorods as a colorimetric sensor element for the identification and classification of biological neurotransmitters. Initially, the gold nanorods undergo corrosion and annihilation in neutral conditions by means of a corrosive substance. Subsequently, in the presence of... 

In the first part of this research, we introduce a novel chemiluminescence (CL) sensor array for discrimination of biothiols (e.g., cysteine, glutathione and glutathione disulfide). The proposed CL sensor array is based on the CL efficiencies of four types of enhanced nanoparticle-based CL systems. The intensity of CL was altered to varying degrees upon interaction with biothiols, producing unique CL response patterns. These distinct CL response patterns were collected as “fingerprints” and were then identified through chemometric methods, including linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). The developed array was able to successfully differentiate between... 

Biological thiols are crucial substances that play an essential role in several biological processes and activities in the body. Hence, the fluctuation of their concentrations can be used as a diagnostic sign for numerous disorders. In contrast, the ratio of these thiols to their disulfide form within the cell is useful as an indicator for determining cytotoxicity. Hence, it is crucial for develop a simple yet efficient analytical technique for quickly recognizing and determining them. The purpose of this study is to develop a plasmonic colorimetric sensor by utilizing gold nanorods (AuNRs). This sensor aims to accurately measure and distinguish between cysteine (CYS) and glutathione (GSH),... 

There is great attention in developing rapid and straightforward methods for the identification of various pesticides that are usually used simultaneously in agricultural products. It is due to the extensive use of a diverse class of pesticides in agricultural products and their high toxicity which causes serious diseases in the human body. In the current study, a non-enzymatic sensor array has been developed for the identification and discrimination of five different pesticides belong to diverse classes including organophosphate, carbamate, and bipyridylium. For this aim, gold nanoparticles with two different capping agents consisting of citrate and borohydride were used as sensing... 

The vivid optical properties of gold nanorods (AuNRs) arising from their unique structural anisotropy have been an object of fascination in a broad range of applications over the past decade. The pseudo-one-dimensional rod-shaped morphology of AuNRs underlies two distinct LSPR bands attributed to the longitudinal and the transversal oscillation of the surface plasmons. Indeed, the brilliant and high-contrast rainbow color tonality of AuNRs primarily emanates from the dramatic dependency of the location of the aforementioned bands on the aspect ratio of the nanorods. It is so profound that a minute increment of the aspect ratio is followed by a significant redshift of the longitudinal peak... 

Zinc oxide(ZnO) nanoparticles have been used in a wide-ranging of applications such as transparent UV protection, medical treatments, light emitting diodes, sensors and photovoltaic cells. Many applications of ZnO nanoparticles could be improved by changing the particle size, shape and morphology. In order to take advantage of the unique size dependent properties observed for ZnO anoparticles, knowledge of how particle growth can be controlled is required. As an alternative to transmittance electron microscopy (TEM), which is already used in the study of size and monodispersity of ZnO nanoparticles during synthesis, we proposed a simple spectrophotometric method coupled with chemometric... 

Antibiotics (ABs) have been regarded as powerful medications to treat or prevent bacterial infections. The antibiotic resistance though, is one of daunting challenges of our time which has been attributed to the overuse of these drugs and usage of antibiotic-contaminated food resources. Developing rapid and visual detection methods capable of simultaneously monitoring Abs is highly desired due to their harmful effects on human health. In the present study, we have designed a colorimetric sensor array consisting of two types of gold nanoparticles (i.e., Citrate-capped gold nanoparticles (Cit-AuNPs) and Borohydride-capped gold nanoparticles (BH4-AuNPs) for the discrimination and determination... 

Cancer treatment is one of the most challenging issues of recent years. Extensive researches have been conducted in various fields of medicine, pharmacy, and medical physics in this regard. Today, considering nanotechnology developments, researchers believe that full cancer treatment is possible through the use of nano-systems designed with scientific background to overcome the defects of previous methods. In this research, the main purpose is to design and synthesize multifunctional hybrid nanostructures with favorable optical and magnetic properties providing a way to combine chemotherapy and thermal treatment. Accordingly, two different structures were designed and experimentally... 

High-quality online services demand reliable and fast packet delivery at the network layer. However, clear evidence documents the existence of compromised routers in the ISP and enterprise networks, threatening network availability and reliability. A compromised router can stealthily drop, modify, inject, or delay packets in the forwarding path to launch Denial-of-Service, surveillance, man-in-the-middle attacks, etc. So researches tried to create intrusion detection methods to identify adversarial routers and switches. To this end, data-plane fault localization (FL) aims to identify faulty links and is an effective means of achieving high network availability. FL protocols use... 

Confining nematic liquid crystal between two curved boundary conditions while the nematic molecules have a degenerate planar anchoring leads to complex and beautiful textures of molecular disparagement(defect) in the bulk and on the surfaces. Such the liquid crystal shells are made with double-emulsion techniques in microfluidic devices have provided applications for micro-scale colloidal linkers.In this work, we have numerically minimized the elastic energy in one-constant approximation in present of Fournier’s degenerate surface potential with finite element method. The nematic shell is confined between two spherical surfaces that we have studied the final energies and their related... 

Secure routing is a major key to service maintenance in wireless ad hoc networks. Ad hoc nature exposes the network to several types of node misbehavior or attacks. Wormhole attack is one of the most severe active attacks to mobile ad hoc networks. Noting the resource limitations in such networks, nodes may have a tendency to behave selfishly. Selfish behavior can have drastic impacts on network performance. We have proposed a Misbehavior-Tolerant Multipath Routing protocol (MTMR) which detects and punishes all types of misbehavior such as selfish behavior, wormhole, sinkhole and grey-hole attacks. The protocol utilizes a proactive approach to enforce cooperation. In addition, it uses a...