A novel cyanide ion sensing approach based on Raman scattering for the detection of environmental cyanides

This paper describes a direct optical approach based on Raman scattering for selective and sensitive detection of cyanide ions in aqueous environment without requiring time-consuming sample pretreatment and the formation of hydrogen cyanide. Due to the strong affinity between copper (I) and cyanide ion, evaporated copper (I) iodide (CuI) thin films are shown to be excellent substrates for selective recognition of free cyanide ions in aqueous matrices. The amount of cyanide ion retained by the copper (I) in the CuI thin films reflects its actual concentration in tested samples, and the subsequent Raman measurements of the substrate are shown to be capable of detecting toxic cyanide content at levels under international drinking water standard and environmental regulatory concentrations. Measurements obtained from the same batch of evaporated CuI thin films (∼100-nm thickness) show excellent linearity over a variety of cyanide concentrations ranging from 1.5 μM to 0.15 mM. This detection method offers the advantage of selectively detecting cyanides causing a health hazard while avoiding detection of other common interfering anions such as Cl−, Br−, PO43−, SO42−, NO2−, S2− and SCN−. Coupled with portable Raman systems that are commercially available, our detection approach will provide on-site monitoring capability with little sample preparation or instrument supervision, which will greatly expedite the assessment of potential environmental cyanide risks.