Morphology-tunable polydopamine nanoparticles and their application in Fe3+ detection

Publication date: 1 August 2017
Source:Talanta, Volume 170
Author(s): Peng Qi, Dun Zhang, Yi Wan
In this work, we discovered the morphology transformation property of polydopamine (PDA) nanomaterials, the addition of Fe³⁺ initiated the dramatic morphology transformation of PDA dots from aggregated plate-like to uniform willow-leaf-like morphology. Further study revealed that this fascinating morphology transformation process could be attributed to the oxidative nature and coordination characteristic of Fe³⁺. This is the first report on the morphology transformation ability of PDA, and a probable self-assembled mechanism was proposed to explain this issue. Besides, we noticed that morphological and fluorescent properties of PDA dots were closely related, thus a fluorescent Fe³⁺ detection method was presented based on the morphology-tunable PDA dots. With the proposed method, selective Fe³⁺ detection was achieved with a wide linear dynamic range of 10μM to 1mM. Furthermore, since the morphology tuning behavior of PDA dots was easy to operate, we anticipate this ability will find significant utility in sensing, drug delivery, and tissue engineering.

Graphical abstract

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