Yellow-fluorescence carbon dots employed for pH sensing and the
detection of tigecycline
Abstract
Long-wavelength fluorescence of carbon dots (CDs) show the great
importance in multiple fields, especially for the biochemical sensing.
Here we proposed one type of CDs doped with nitrogen and sulfur through
the hydrothermal method, which exhibited the obvious
yel-low-fluorescence in aqueous. Importantly, their fluorescence
intensity of CDs decreased with pH decreasing in the acidic range, thus
a linear relationship between pH and fluorescence intensity was
established, and exhibiting the potential of pH sensing. Additionally,
in-troducing tigecycline into CDs resulted in their decreased
fluorescence, thus we further established a strategy of detecting
tigecycline with the concentration range of 200 μM to 7 nM. Meanwhile,
we elucidated the static quenching as the major mechanism for CDs
responding tigecycline, which was induced by the formed new complex
between CDs and tigecycline. Furthermore, the practicality of the method
was verified by examining the recovery of tigecycline in the actual
lake-water samples.