Simultaneous Cross-type Detection of Water Quality Indexes via a Smartphone-App Integrated Microfluidic Paper-Based Platform

Xiaolu Xiong; Chengwang Guo; Gengyang Yan; Bingxin Han; Zan Wu; Yueqian Chen; Shiqi Xu; Peng Shao; Hong Song; Xiyan Xu; Junfeng Han

doi:10.1021/acsomega.2c05938

Simultaneous Cross-type Detection of Water Quality Indexes via a Smartphone-App Integrated Microfluidic Paper-Based Platform

ACS Omega. 2022 Nov 23;7(48):44338-44345. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c05938. eCollection 2022 Dec 6.

Authors

Xiaolu Xiong^{1

2}, Chengwang Guo¹, Gengyang Yan³, Bingxin Han¹, Zan Wu⁴, Yueqian Chen¹, Shiqi Xu^{1

2}, Peng Shao⁴, Hong Song³, Xiyan Xu⁵, Junfeng Han^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Quantum Physics, Key Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Quantum Architecture and Measurement (MOE), School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China.
² Yangtze Delta Region Academy of Beijing Institute of Technology, Jiaxing314000, China.
³ School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China.
⁴ Institute of Analysis and Testing, Beijing Academy of Science and Technology, Beijing Center for Physical and Chemical Analysis, Beijing100089, China.
⁵ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing102488, China.

Abstract

Water quality guarantee in remote areas necessitates the development of portable, sensitive, fast, cost-effective, and easy-to-use water quality detection methods. The current work reports on a microfluidic paper-based analytical device (μPAD) integrated with a smartphone app for the simultaneous detection of cross-type water quality parameters including pH, Cu(II), Ni(II), Fe(III), and nitrite. The shapes, baking time, amount, and ratios of reaction reagent mixtures of wax μPAD were optimized to improve the color uniformity and intensity effectively. An easy-to-use smartphone app was established for recording, analyzing, and directly reading the colorimetric signals and target concentrations on μPAD. The results showed that under the optimum conditions, the current analytical platform has reached the detection limits of 0.4, 1.9, 2.9, and 1.1 ppm for nitrite, Cu(II), Ni(II), and Fe(III), respectively, and the liner ranges are 2.3-90 ppm (nitrite), 3.8-400 ppm (Cu(II)), 2.9-1000 ppm (Ni(II)), 2.8-500 ppm (Fe(III)), and 5-9 (pH). The proposed portable smartphone-app integrated μPAD detection system was successfully applied to real industrial wastewater and river water quality monitoring. The proposed method has great potential for field water quality detection.