The new approach for captopril detection employing triangular gold nanoparticles-catalyzed luminol chemiluminescence

In this work, we utilize the triangular gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) prepared by trisodium citrate reduction of HAuCl4 in presence of nonionic fluorosurfactant (FSN) as a novel chemiluminescence (CL) probe for the determination of captopril. Captopril can induce a sharp decrease in CL intensity from the triangular AuNPs-catalyzed luminol system. Under the selected experimental conditions, a linear relationship was obtained between the logarithm of CL intensity and the logarithm of concentration of captopril in the range of 23.0-920 nM, and the detection limit at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3 for captopril was 4.6 nM. The as-prepared triangular AuNPs were easier to synthesize, stable at a wider pH range and high ionic strength, and exhibited a high selectivity and an excellent sensitivity toward captopril. The applicability of the proposed method has been validated by determining captopril in commercial pharmaceutical formulations and human urine samples with satisfactory results. The recoveries for captopril in spiked samples were found to be between 95.0% and 103.5%. The method shows promise for routine control analysis of pharmaceutical preparations and human urine samples. Moreover, based on the CL spectra, UV-vis spectra and transmission electron microscope (TEM) measurements, a possible CL mechanism was proposed. The mechanism of high selectivity toward captopril is supposed to originate from the tight binding of the sulphydryl groups of captopril to the active site of the as-prepared triangular AuNPs, leading to oxygen-related radicals cannot easily be generated from H2O2 on the surface of triangular AuNPs. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.