Jafar Abolhasani - Department of Chemistry,Faculty of Science,Tabriz Branch,Islamic Azad University,Tabriz,Iran
Nima Serrpoush Hamid - Department of Chemistry,Faculty of Science,Tabriz Branch,Islamic Azad University,Tabriz,Iran
Ebrahim Ghorbani Kalhor - Department of Chemistry,Faculty of Science,Tabriz Branch,Islamic Azad University,Tabriz,Iran

In this paper silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been introduced as colorimetric reporters for the detection of propylthiouracil. Silver nanoparticles are dispersed in solution and have a surface plasmon absorption band at ca. 400 nm. Addition of propylthiouracil to silver nanoparticles solution leads to the aggregation of nanoparticles. Upon aggregation, the colour of AgNPs changes from yellow to brown and a decrease and red shift of Ag-NPs’ maximal absorption band was observed. By carefully optimizing important experimental factors such as pH, concentration of silver nanoparticles and incubation time we were able to obtain the best calibration graph that was linear in the range of 0.02– 0.8 μg/mL with a low detection limit down to 0.009 μg/ml

Silver nanoparticles; Propylthiouracil; Surface plasmon resonance