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. 2019 May 28;9:7938. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-44128-z

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Key steps and reagents used to hydrolytically degrade SiO2 nanoparticles under basic conditions using potassium hydroxide, and detect dissolved Si and Si(OH)4, respectively, under acidic conditions. The SiO2 concentrations stated are those used for the method development. (A) HF-free procedure for detection by inductively coupled plasma – optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) method suitable for complex matrices and accurate detection of low Si concentrations. (B) Procedure for detection by the colorimetric method using a UV-vis spectrophotometer. This method involves in situ HF, was used to validate method A, and is suitable for simple sample matrices.