Simultaneous electrochemical determination of persistent petrogenic organic pollutants based on AgNPs synthesized using carbon dots derived from mushroom

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are highly carcinogenic substances and accumulate in water bodies through various industries. Due to their harmful effects on humans, it is very important to monitor PAHs in various water resources. In the present work, we report an electrochemical sensor based on silver nanoparticles synthesized using mushroom-derived carbon dots for the simultaneous determination of anthracene and naphthalene, for the first time. Pleurotus species mushroom was used to synthesize the carbon dots (C-dots) via the hydrothermal method and these C-dots were used as a reducing agent for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The synthesized AgNPs have been characterized through UV–Visible and FTIR spectroscopy, DLS, XRD, XPS, FE-SEM, and HR-TEM. Well-characterized AgNPs were used to modify glassy carbon electrodes (GCEs) by the drop-casting method. Ag-NPs/GCE has shown strong electrochemical activity towards the oxidation of anthracene and naphthalene at well-separated potentials in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) at pH 7.0. The sensor exhibited a wide linear working range of 250 nM to 1.15 mM for anthracene and 500 nM to 842 μM for naphthalene with the corresponding lowest detection limits (LODs) of 112 nM and 383 nM respectively with extraordinary anti-interference ability against many possible interferents. The fabricated sensor showed high stability and reproducibility. The usefulness of the sensor for the monitoring of anthracene and naphthalene in a seashore soil sample has been demonstrated by the standard addition method. The sensor gave better results with a high recovery percentage indicating the first-ever device to detect two PAHs at the single electrode with the best analytical results.