A Fast and Reliable Electrophoretic Method for Size-Based Characterization of Silver Nanoparticles

The reported study demonstrates the analytical potential and utility of capillary electrophoresis for rapid size-based characterization of Ag NPs by using 50 mM tris and 35 mM SDS buffer of 8.7 pH at an applied voltage of 20 kV. A good linear correlation (R-2 = 0.98) was observed between the electrophoretic mobilities and sizes of Ag NPs with a relatively small standard deviation of <1%. We also employed these separation conditions to study the feasibility of the developed method to characterize the green synthesized Ag NPs of unknown size, and the validation and accuracy of the obtained results from the capillary electrophoresis (CE) method were done by comparing the size results of CE with those obtained from AFM analysis. The comparison shows a very good agreement of sizes existing between these two techniques. This work demonstrates the novelty of capillary electrophoresis to be used as a characterization tool for nanoparticle size detection instead of using expensive conventional techniques.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the potential and utility of capillary electrophoresis for rapid size-based characterization of Ag NPs. By using specific buffer and voltage conditions, the size of Ag NPs can be analyzed based on electrophoretic mobility, providing comparable results with conventional techniques at a lower cost.