Spectrophotometric detection of diethylstilbestrol on the basis of the plasmon resonance absorption of silver nanoparticles

In this study, a spectrophotometric detection method for diethylstilbestrol (DES) was proposed by reducing silver nitrate (AgNO3) to obtain silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in the medium of ammonia and sodium hydroxide. It was found that the resulting AgNPs have plasmon resonance absorption (PRA) characteristic at 415 nm, and the PRA is proportional to the increase of DES concentration in the range of 4.0×10-8-1.0×10-5M with the detection limit (3σ) of 1.2×10-7M. Most of the coexisting substances at high concentrations did not affect the detection of real samples, such as tablets. The recovery was in the range of 96.01%-107.41% and the RSD was lower than 4.7%. This method can be successfully applied to control preparation quality of DES.