Using high-energy phosphate as energy-donor and nucleus growth-inhibitor to prepare carbon dots for hydrogen peroxide related biosensing

摘要

The various synthetic routes of carbon dots (C-dots) feature a considerable step toward their potential use in sensors and biotechnology. Herein, by coupling pyrophosphate introduction with high-energy phosphate bond design, the fluorescence performance of C-dots is improved greatly. The introduction of pyrophosphate acts as the nucleus growth-inhibitor to protect C-dots from assembling and growing into large carbon particles. The high-energy phosphate bond is designed as an energy-donor to provide energy for synthesizing C-dots. The C-dots exhibit enhanced fluorescence with a high quantum yield of 24.8%. Then the C-dots are employed as the fluorescent probe to develop hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-related biosensors. The mechanism is based on the fluorescence quenching of C-dots caused by the highly reactive OH and Fe3+during the Fenton reaction. A wide linear range (0.5–100 μM) and a low detection limit (0.195 μM) are achieved for H2O2detection. Moreover, the probe can be applied to H2O2-related biosensing in the presence of oxidase. As a proof-of-concept, a glucose sensor is developed with glucose oxidase. The presented glucose sensor exhibits good selectivity and high sensitivity with a detection limit of 0.254 μM. Additionally, the practical application of the proposed biosensor has been confirmed by detecting glucose in human serum samples.