IIT Bombay, Australia's Monash University develop sensor for toxic metals

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The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay on Friday said that its researchers, in collaboration with an Australian university, have developed a sensor to detect toxic metals in water cost-effectively and efficiently.

In a bid to address heavy metal pollution, researchers from IIT Bombay and Monash University, Australia, with funding support from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), have developed a sensor using a copper-based metal-organic framework (MOF) to detect toxic metals in water, the institute said in a statement.

Heavy metals in water pose significant environmental and health concerns due to their potential toxicity, persistence, and bio-accumulative (ability to accumulate within living organisms) nature.

Ingesting these metals can cause serious health problems, including damage to skin, bones, brain and other organs, especially in children.

Efficient detection of these metals in water is crucial to ensure environmental safety and public health.

According to the statement, researchers fabricated a MOF with copper-forming metal nodes connected by the organic compound tetrakis porphyrin to make copper-tetra carboxyphenyl porphyrin (Cu-TCPP), which is more efficient at picking up heavy metal ions than conventional 3D materials.

The sensor can detect heavy metal ions like lead, cadmium and mercury in water samples, even when only a few atoms per millilitre are present.

"This MOF involves two copper atoms binding to each carboxyphenyl arm of the TCPP molecule, forming the characteristic paddle-wheel structure. This means that other metal ions with similar configurations can replace copper in the structure and maintain the overall order without causing structural collapse. Other metal ions, especially heavy metal ions, can also accumulate on the MOF lattice," said Prashanth Kannan, the IIT Bombay-Monash Research Academy student and first author of the paper.

Researchers tested the sensor on water samples from taps and lakes and accurately detected lead, cadmium and mercury, even in trace amounts.

They also compared their device with the state-of-the-art sensors available in the market and found that it performed comparably, if not better, in most cases.

"Our device has the least complexity and comparable sensing limits to the best of the current DNA-based sensors (the gold standard for sensing devices)," Kannan said.