3rd-INCC

Tritium probe in nanoparticles investigations

Not scheduled

15m

Città del Mare, Terrasini - Palermo - Sicily - Italy

oral presentation Radioanalytical Chemistry and Nanoparticles

Speaker

Dr Maria Chernysheva (Lomonosov Moscow State University)

Description

Tritium atoms that form on the surface of hot tungsten filament are used as a labeled agent for organic compounds. The labeling efficiency itself under the certain conditions (W-wire temperature, tritium gas pressure and time of the explosion) and tritium distribution in the target or in its fragments can characterize the structural peculiarities of subsurface layer. Furthermore, the labeled compounds can be used as a tracer in the sorption experiments. The experimental complex that used atomic tritium and liquid scintillation spectrometry of tritium in different variants is called “tritium probe”. In this research we introduced tritium in lysozyme, human serum albumin, pluronic P123 and humic substances separated from coal and river. Furthermore, we have shown that not only organic materials but carbon-based nanomaterials can be radiolabeled with the help of such technique. Tritium labeled biopolymers were used for studying their adsorption at the aqueous/oil (scintillation phase method) and at the aqueous/hydrophobic solids interfaces. Tritium tracer method is the one that allowed quantitatively characterize the adsorption of biomacromolecules at the mentioned interfaces. By liquid scintillation spectrometry of tritium the adsorption capacity of mentioned biopolymers to carbon-based nanomaterials (single-walled carbon nanotubes, graphene and nanodiamonds) was compared with liquid hydrophobic analogues (p-xylene, octane and octanol). In each case adsorption at the aqueous/oil interface was at least an order of magnitude higher than at the aqueous/solid. Thus, the influence of hydrophobic phase nature and its role in the adsorption process were revealed. We observed the significantly changes in the possibility of stable aqueous suspensions formation of the initial and modified nanomaterial. In the opposite to nanodiamonds after the formation of the adsorption layer on graphene or on single-walled nanotubes surface the sedimentation stability of the suspension of nanoparticles was extremely increased. This work was supported by the RFBR (09-03-00819).