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Nanoecotoxicology

Nanoparticle behaviour dissected

Nature Nanotechnology volume 11, pages 656–657 (2016)Cite this article

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Measuring changes in the isotopic composition of silver offers clues on how silver nanoparticles are transformed in the environment.

All elements with two or more isotopes show natural variation in their isotopic composition due to isotope fractionation — a process in which one isotope is enriched over the other during a chemical or physical process. Owing to differences in mass, the isotopes of an element may engage in physical processes or (bio)chemical reactions with different rates and these processes may have different equilibriums. Typically, the lighter isotope shows a slightly higher reaction rate, whereas the heavier one shows a slight preference for the strongest bonding environment. Determining the changes in the isotopic composition of elements offers a wealth of information in many contexts. For example, such data have been used to determine how rocks and minerals form, and to study various other geological processes. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Qian Liu, Guibin Jiang and colleagues at the State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Chinese Academy of Sciences now report that isotopic analysis offers new insights into the transformation processes of silver nanoparticles in the environment1.

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Figure 1: High-precision Ag isotopic analysis using MC-ICP-MS reveals that the transformation processes of nanoparticles are accompanied by isotope fractionation.

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  1. Frank Vanhaecke is in the Department of Analytical Chemistry at Ghent University, Campus Sterre, Krijgslaan 281-S12, 9000 Ghent, Belgium,

    Frank Vanhaecke

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  1. Frank Vanhaecke
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Correspondence to Frank Vanhaecke.

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Vanhaecke, F. Nanoparticle behaviour dissected. Nature Nanotech 11, 656–657 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.119

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