Carbon nano-dots as a fluorescent and colorimetric dual-readout probe for the detection of arginine and Cu2+ and its logic gate operation

Wenjing Lu; Yifang Gao; Yuan Jiao; Shaomin Shuang; Chenzhong Li; Chuan Dong

doi:10.1039/c7nr02336g

Carbon nano-dots as a fluorescent and colorimetric dual-readout probe for the detection of arginine and Cu²⁺ and its logic gate operation

Nanoscale. 2017 Aug 17;9(32):11545-11552. doi: 10.1039/c7nr02336g.

Authors

Wenjing Lu¹, Yifang Gao, Yuan Jiao, Shaomin Shuang, Chenzhong Li, Chuan Dong

Affiliation

¹ Institute of Environmental Science, and School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China. dc@sxu.edu.cn.

PMID: 28770932
DOI: 10.1039/c7nr02336g

Abstract

A new visual fluorescent probe based on carbon nano-dots (CNDs) has been facilely synthesized via one step microwave-assisted pyrolysis and utilized for sequential detection of arginine (Arg) and Cu²⁺ by fluorescent and colorimetric dual-readout assay. The fluorescence of CNDs can be effectively quenched by Arg, and recovered upon addition of Cu²⁺ due to the competitive binding of Arg and Cu²⁺ that leads Arg to escape from the surface of CNDs. The probe displayed high sensitivity and selectivity toward Arg and Cu²⁺ over other analytes with a low detection limit of 0.26 μM and 0.17 μM, respectively. Meanwhile, the CNDs can also give dual responsive signals of a visible color change (yellow-pink-light yellow). According to this phenomenon, an "AND" logic gate based on the novel CNDs has been constructed. More importantly, the probe was also extended to cellular imaging. The proposed method was simple with ease of operation, which demonstrated great potential in bio-sensing, disease diagnosis or environmental monitoring.