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Carboxy, amino, and thiol groups play a critical role in a variety of physiological and biological processes and are frequently used for bioconjugation reactions. Moreover, they enable size control and tuning of the surface during the synthesis of particle systems. Especially, thiols have a high binding affinity to noble metals and semiconductors (SC). Thus, simple, inexpensive, robust, and fast methods for the quantification of surface groups and the monitoring of reactions involving ligands are of considerable importance for the characterization of modified or stabilized nanomaterials including polymers.
We studied the potential of the Ellman’s assay, recently used for the quantification of thiol ligands on SC nanocrystals by us1 and the 4-aldrithiol assay for the determination of thiol groups in molecular systems and on polymeric, noble and SC nanomaterials. The results were validated with ICP-OES and reaction mechanisms of both methods were studied photometrically and with ESI-TOF-MS.
The investigation of the reaction mechanisms of both methods revealed the influence of different thiols on the stoichiometry of the reactions2, yielding different mixed disulfides and the thiol-specific products spectroscopically detected. The used methods can quantify freely accessible surface groups on nanoparticles, e.g., modified polystyrene nanoparticles. For thiol ligands coordinatively bound to surface atoms of, e.g., noble or SC nanomaterials, depending on the strength of the thiol-surface bonds, particle dissolution prior to assay performance can be necessary.
We could demonstrate the reliability of the Ellman’s and aldrithiol assay for the quantification of surface groups on nanomaterials by ICP-OES and derived assay-specific requirements and limitations. Generally, it is strongly recommended to carefully control assay performance for new samples, components, and sample ingredients to timely identify possible interferences distorting quantification.
Nanometer- and micrometer-sized particles are of increasing importance for a wide range of applications in the material and life sciences. This includes carriers for, e.g., drugs as well as dye molecules for use as multichromophoric reporters for signal enhancement in optical assays, platforms for DNA sequencing, and the fabrication of nanosensors and targeted probes for bioimaging studies.
Application-relevant properties of such particles include their size (and size distribution), shape, colloidal stability, biocompatibility, and ease of subsequent functionalization, e.g., with linkers, sensor molecules, and targeting ligands. The latter requires knowledge of the number of groups effectively accessible for subsequent coupling reactions and hence, selective and sensitive methods of analysis, which can be ideally employed for the characterization of a broad variety of particle systems independent of their optical properties, i.e., scattering or the presence of encoding dyes. For product control, robust, reliable and fast methods performable with inexpensive equipment are prefered.
In this respect, we studied a variety of conventional labels for optical readout, utilizing changes in intensity and/or color of absorption and/or emission. In addition, we developed a platform of cleavable and multimodal labels for optical assays which consist of a cleavable linker and an optically active reporter moiety. In contrast to conventional reporters measured directly at the particle surface, which are prone to signal distortions by scattering and encoding dyes, these cleavable labels can be detected colorimetrically or fluorometrically both bound at the particle surface and after quantitative cleavage of the linker in the transparent supernatant. Moreover, they enable straightforward validation by method comparison with elemental analysis, ICP-OES or ICP-MS.
Here, we present representative examples of newly synthesized cleavable labels and their application for the quantification of amino, thiol and carboxy surface groups on different nanomaterials and compare these results with measurements using conventional optical labels.