The testing and rapid detection of pathogenic organisms is a crucial protocol in the prevention and identification of crises related to health, safety and wellbeing.

This paper describes a simple and reproducible solution phase synthesis approach for selenium nanoparticles by reducing selenium tetrachloride in the presence of ascorbic acid. An optimization study with poly (sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) produced stable and spherical narrowly size distributed nanoparticles (46 nm) which are considered highly monodisperse. The presence of selenium nanoparticles was confirmed by UV-visible spectroscopy for surface plasmon resonance (262 nm), elemental dispersive spectroscopy (11 KeV and 12.5 KeV) and size ranges characterized by dynamic light scattering (PDI = 0.04, size range of optimized nanoparticles = 35 nm to 75 nm), and visualized using scanning and transmission electron microscopy.