Abstract
Mercury ions have been considered highly toxic to human health. What would be great is to develop the ionic probes without any toxicities themselves. Here, we report a friendly, highly sensitive mercury (II) ionic probe, water-soluble photoluminescence carbon dots which were synthesized by simply hydrothermal treatment of fresh cherry tomatoes without adding any other reagents. The ultra-small (<1 nm) carbon dots show robust excitation-depended photoluminescence under a wide pH range (4–10) or a strong ionic strength of up to 1 M, and the detection limit of mercury (II) has been determined as low as 18 nM. We envision such water-soluble, biocompatible carbon dots that could be applied to biolabeling, bio-imaging, and biosensing fields.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21171086 and 81160213), and Inner Mongolia Grassland Talent (No. 108-108038), Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China (Nos. 2013MS1121 and 2015MS0806), Inner Mongolia Department of Science and Technology (No. 211-202077), and the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University (Nos. 109-108040, 211-109003, and 211-206038).
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Wang, P., Zhong, RB., Yuan, M. et al. Mercury (II) detection by water-soluble photoluminescent ultra-small carbon dots synthesized from cherry tomatoes. NUCL SCI TECH 27, 35 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-016-0038-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-016-0038-1