Folic Acid Sensing using CdTe doped Polyvinyl Alcohol Nanocomposite Hydrogels

In the present work, a comprehensive study is carried out to use amino acid mixed polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) based hybrid hydrogels as sensing material for detection of folic acid (FA). Thioglycolic acid (TGA) capped cadmium telluride (CdTe) nanostructures were used as dopant to enhance the efficiency and sensitivity of the PVA hydrogels. Three different types of hybrid hydrogels were synthesized using L-phenylalanine (PA), L-leucine (LEU) and L-tyrosine (TYR). Various chemical and physical characterizations were carried out to investigate the properties of TGA/CdTe nanostructures and PVA based hybrid hydrogels. A fluorescence quenching based detection technique was developed to detect the concentrations of FA. From the analysis of these six different hydrogels, it was observed that CdTe doped hybrid hydrogels show the best performance with sensitivity in the range of 0.229 µg/cm3 with limit of detection of 1.86 ng/cm3.