Abstract
The study of the chemical behavior of uranyl species and its rapid detection is of primary environmental and non-proliferation concern. Herein we report on a surface enhanced Raman spectroscopic study of uranyl ion (UO22+) sorption onto the thermally vapor deposited silver particle surface. The ability of vibrational spectroscopy to characterize surface phenomenon and the remarkable sensitivity of the surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) have been introduced as an appropriate combination for the surface characterization and detection of UO22+ onto the silver surface. The appearance of symmetric stretching frequency of UO22+ around 700 cm-1 and the disappearance of the 854 cm-1 band is attributed to the development of a chemical bond between silver surface and uranyl species. The effects of temperature, solute-surface interaction time, and pH have been studied using silver modified polypropylene filter (PPF) substrates. Results show that under appropriate conditions, the concentration of uranyl ion as low as 20 ng/mL can be easily detected using the discussed SERS approach without any surface modification of silver nanoparticles. Moreover, an alteranative SERS approach of uranyl detection is demonstrated using nano-lithographically fabricated SERS substrates.
