• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.473-479
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• 2016

We report a highly selective and sensitive 200 MHz Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) sensor that can detect cyanide ion in aqueous solution using surface immobilized thioester molecules in combination with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). To construct the sensor device, a monolayer of thioester compound was immobilized on the SAW sensor surface. At the sensor surface, hydrolysis of thioester group by nucleophilic addition of cyanide occurred and the resulting free thiol unit bound to AuNP to form thiol-AuNP conjugate. For the signal enhancement, gold staining signal amplification process was introduced subsequently with gold (III) chloride trihydrate and reducing agent, hydroxylamine hydrochloride. The SAW sensor showed a detection ability of $17.7{\mu}M$ for cyanide in aqueous solution and demonstrated a saturation behavior between the frequency shift and the concentration of cyanide ion. On the other hand, our SAW sensor had no activities for other anions such as fluoride ion, acetate ion and sulfate ion, moreover, no significant interference observed by other anions. Finally, all the experiments were carried out in-house developed sensor and fluidics modules to obtain highly reproducible results.