A method for the rapid detection of heavy metal mercury ions based on a novel mercury chelator N,N'-bis (2-mercaptoethyl) isophthalamide.

Mercury has caused severe harm to the environment and human health. A novel biological screen method was developed and identified a Hg2+ chelator BDTH2. Both biological and chemical methods demonstrated BDTH2 displayed a high specificity and strong binding capacity for Hg2+. Toxicological experiments of BDTH2 demonstrated its good safety. To enhance the sensitivity, functional composite BDTH2-AuNPs were synthesized, and the system exhibited strong specificity to Hg2+ and excellent anti-interference capabilities. The optimized colorimetric method and the paper test strip method showed a visual detection limit of 3 nM less than 30 s and 5 nM within 1 min respectively. This system was evaluated for detecting spiked Hg2+ concentrations in environmental water and six agricultural food samples and showed high consistence with those of ICP-MS. Therefore, this study provides a novel, rapid, and economical method for on-site detecting of Hg2+ in water and agricultural products.