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  • Detection and differentiation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water using a fluorescent imprint-and-report sensor array
Title: Detection and differentiation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water using a fluorescent imprint-and-report sensor array
Widespread industrial use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as surfactants has led to global contamination of water sources with these persistent, highly stable chemicals. As a result, humans and wildlife are regularly exposed to PFAS, which have been shown to bioaccumulate and cause adverse health effects. Methods for detecting PFAS in water are currently limited and primarily utilize mass spectrometry (MS), which is time-consuming and requires expensive instrumentation. Thus, new methods are needed to rapidly and reliably assess the pollution level of water sources. While some fluorescent PFAS sensors exist, they typically function in high nanomolar or micromolar concentration ranges and focus on sensing only 1–2 individual PFAS. Our work aims to address this problem by developing a fluorescent sensor for both individual PFAS, as well as complex PFAS mixtures, and demonstrate its functionality in tap water samples. Here we show that dynamic combinatorial libraries (DCLs) with simple building blocks can be templated with a fluorophore and subsequently used as sensors to form an array that differentially detects each PFAS species and various mixtures thereof. Our method is a high-throughput analysis technique that allows many samples to be analyzed simultaneously with a plate reader. This is one of the first examples of a fluorescent PFAS sensor array that functions at low nanomolar concentrations, and herein we report its use for the rapid detection of PFAS contamination in water.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2107685
NSF-PAR ID:
10451876
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Chemical Science
Volume:
14
Issue:
4
ISSN:
2041-6520
Page Range / eLocation ID:
928 to 936
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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