Fast and eco-friendly synthesis of carbon dots from pinecone for highly effective detection of 2,4,6-trinitrophenol in environmental samples

ABSTRACT

2,4,6-Trinitrophenol (TNP) has high explosive risks and biological toxicity, and there has been considerable concern over the determination of TNP. In the present work, fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) stemmed from a green carbon source of pinecone by the facile hydrothermal approach. A novel environment- friendly fluorescent probe was developed to efficiently detect TNP by using the obtained CDs with remarkable fluorescence stability. The fluorescent CDs exhibited obvious excitation dependence with the highest peaks for excitation and emission occurring at 321 and 411 nm, respectively. The fluorescence intensity is significantly reduced by TNP owing to the inner filter effect with the CDs. The probe exhibited good linearity with TNP concentrations in the range of 0.025–20 μg mL⁻¹, and the limit of detection was as low as 8.5 ng mL⁻¹. Additionally, the probe proved successful in sensing TNP quantitatively in actual environmental samples with satisfied recoveries of 95.6–99.6%. The developed fluorescent probe offered an environment-friendly, efficient, rapid, and reliable platform for detecting trace TNP in the environmental field.

Highlights

• Novel carbon dots were synthesised from green precursors of pineal powder.

• The highly effective quenching process was put down to the inner filter effect.

• The as-constructed fluorescent probe was successfully utilised for sensing 2,4,6-trinitrophenol in environmental samples.

• The proposed method was simple, rapid, efficient, economical, and eco-friendly.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon dots
• fluorescence probe
• 2,4,6-Trinitrophenol
• Inner filter effect
• environmental samples

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Yongli Liu: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Software, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing-original draft, Funding acquisition, and Visualisation. Guobei Ge: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Supervision, and Writing-original draft. Huanjia Liu: Writing-review and editing. Yuxin Wang: Investigation and Data curation. Penghui Zhou: Investigation and Data curation. Bin Li: Data curation and Software. Guifen Zhu: Conceptualisation, Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition, and Project administration.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Excellent Science and Technology Innovation Team of Henan Normal University: [Grant Number 2021TD06]; National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 21876045,22106039].