In recent scholarly outputs, a team of researchers from the Department of Chemistry's Advanced Materials Research Group, comprising graduate students Deneikah Jackson, Tahjna Robertson and undergraduate student, Kiara Shannan under the leadership Dr. Peter Nelson (Senior Lecturer), and collaborators co-authored a series of four significant research papers. These publications focused on metal sensing, specifically copper and lead sensing. This work explored the development of electrochemical sensors for accurate “in-the-filed” detection and quantification of lead in water. The significance of this works stems from the fact that lead is well-known neurotoxin and have been proven to retard cognitive development in children, leading to various learning and behavioral disorders. Hence, it is important to be able to rapidly quantify environmental lead since it is well-known to bio-accumulate in both plants and animal tissues where it is then able to enter the human food chain. The research groups is also focused on the development of optical sensors for the detection of compounds (chemicals species) in body fluids (urine, sweat, blood) which might indicate deteriorating health conditions. Development of these sensors makes use of organic synthesis, various electrochemical methods such a cyclic and square wave voltammetries, electrical impedance and absorption spectroscopies. Molecular modeling methods such as density functional theory (DFT) are also applied in the preplanning and also the establishment of fundamental understating of these sensors.

References:

1.       Deneikah T. Jackson, Peter N. Nelson,Kimberly Weston, Richard A. Taylor, Plasticizer-free Hydrazonic Dibenzo-18-crown-6 derived Lead Ion Sensing Electrodes, Sensing and Bio-Sensing Research, 2023, 10.1016/j.sbsr.2023.100570

2.       Deneikah T. Jackson, Peter N. Nelson, Kiara D. Shannan, Synthesis, Spectroscopic and Lead(II) Binding behaviour of three novel Dibenzo-18-crown-6 Hydrazones, Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals,2023, 10.1080/15421406.2023.2231682

3.       Deneikah T. Jackson, Peter N. Nelson, Kimberly Weston and Richard A. Taylor, Preparation and Properties of three Plasticizer free Novel Di-benzo-18-crown-6 Aldimine derived Lead(II) Ion Selective Electrodes, Inorganics, 2023, 11, 275. https://doi.org/10.3390/inorganics11070275

4.       Tahjna I. Robertson, Peter N. Nelson, Experimental and Computational Study on the Spectroscopic and Colorimetric Copper Sensing behaviour of Three ketimine derivatives, Journal of Molecular Structure, 2023, 1288, 135606

Photo caption (Top Row | L-R): Deneikah Jackson, Peter Nelson; (Bottom Row | L-R) Tahjna Robertson and  Kiara Shannan.

Follow the Faculty of Science and Technology on Instagram @uwimona_fst and on Facebook at @ The Faculty of Science and Technology, The UWI Mona. For enquiries, WhatsApp us at 1-876 552-4691, call us at 1-876-977-1785 or email us at fst@uwimona.edu.jm.