Solid-liquid-liquid extraction as an approach to the sensitive detection of a hydrophobic pollutant through surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra of thiram (tetramethylthiuram disulfide), a dimethyl dithiocarbamate fungicide, were recorded after the adsorption on plasmonic silver nanowires from a system of water, organic solvent and nanoparticles. As organic solvents dichloromethane and 1-octanol were involved. A method for measuring the adsorption constant of thiram as a model molecule to the silver surface by studying its partition phenomena in a binary solvent system is presented. The method is based on the extraction of a hydrophobic molecule from an organic solvent by an aqueous suspension of silver anisotropic nanoparticles. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of SERS methodology for the sensitive analysis of compounds with low aqueous solubility, and a reliable SERS spectrum of thiram was obtained with excellent signal/noise ratio at low concentrations. In addition, for vibrational assignments, Density Functional Theory (DFT) was used for the simulation of the Raman and SERS spectra of thiram and its complexes with silver considering the following two models: a single silver atom and an Ag20 cluster.