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Fluorescence

N, S Co-Doped Carbon Quantum Dots for the Selective and Sensitive Fluorescent Determination of N-Acetyl-l-Cysteine in Pharmaceutical Products and Urine

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Pages 1711-1731 | Received 17 Nov 2018, Accepted 04 Jan 2019, Published online: 22 Apr 2019
 

Abstract

To design a probe with “turn-on” sensing, nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon quantum dots (N, S-CQDs) were prepared and screened against some metallic cations to first induce “turn-off” fluorescence. The ferric iron (Fe3+) was shown to be the most responsive and effective in the fluorescence quenching of the N, S-CQDs based on a proposed photo-induced electron transfer mechanism. In addition, the fluorescence of N, S-CQDs-Fe3+ system was well recovered using N-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC) (turn-on) due to a redox reaction, suggesting that the N, S-CQDs-Fe3+ system acts as a highly sensitive and selective sensor for the determination of N-acetyl-l-cysteine with a low limit of detection equal to 65.0 nmol/L and wide linear ranges from 0.67 to 25.56 and 25.56 to 193.55 μmol/L. The “turn-off/on” fluorescence method was successfully employed to monitor N-acetyl-l-cysteine in pharmaceutical products and human urine samples with a recovery range from 99.2 to 101.3%. In addition, the fluorescence switch properties of the nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon quantum dots were also investigated by alternate additions of Fe3+ and N-acetyl-l-cysteine.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Fund for Applied Fundamental Research (2016JY0080), the Doctor Start-up Fund (15E006) of China West Normal University, and the Talent Research Fund of China West Normal University (17YC012).

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