Elsevier

Journal of Luminescence

Volume 130, Issue 8, August 2010, Pages 1463-1469
Journal of Luminescence

Study on fluorescence properties of carbogenic nanoparticles and their application for the determination of ferrous succinate

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlumin.2010.03.013Get rights and content

Abstract

A new type of fluorescent nanomaterial named carbogenic nanoparticles (NPs) has drawn considerable attention recently. In this study, we adopted a direct and simple synthetic method to produce the carbogenic NPs and investigated the fluorescence properties of the as-prepared carbogenic NPs in detail. It was found that the fluorescence of carbogenic NPs was stable with the variance of environmental conditions such as pH, temperature and UV irradiation. More interestingly, we found carbogenic NPs exhibited high selectivity and sensitivity towards ferric ions. Under optimum conditions, a good linear relationship could be obtained between the fluorescence intensity and concentration of ferric ions in the range of 5.0×10−5–5.0×10−4 mol L−1, and the limit of detection is 11.2 μmol L−1. Based on the fluorescence quenching of carbogenic NPs, a rapid and specific quantitative method was proposed for the determination of ferrous succinate. The content of ferrous succinate in commercial tablets determined by the present method was agreed with the spectrophotometric method results and the reproducibility and the recovery of the proposed method were satisfactory.

Introduction

Fluorescent nanomaterials such as semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) [1], silicon nanoparticles (NPs) [2], and carbon nanotubes [3] have attracted much attention in the past decade for their unique optical properties. Recently, a new type of photoluminescent carbogenic NPs has generated a lot of interest and some research groups have worked on the synthesis and potential application of them. The particles were called “carbogenic” because they were not of pure carbon composition like carbon nanotubes or carbon nanodiamond but proved to be oxygen-containing carbon dots. Fluorescent carbogenic NPs can be obtained by various methods such as laser ablation of graphite [4], [5] or carbon powders [6], proton-beam irradiation of nanodiamonds [7], [8], carboxylation of carbon nanotubes [9], [10], [11], electrooxidation of graphite [12], hydrothermal decomposition of ammonium citrate salts [13], [14] or separating from candle soot [15].

It is reported that fluorescent carbogenic NPs share similar optical virtues with metal-based quantum dots such as high quantum yield, tunable emission wavelength but show less physiological toxicity and environmental damage. Thus carbogenic NPs are of great promise for a broad range of biological applications. For instance, carbogenic NPs have been used for labeling human breast cancer cells for multiphoton imaging [5] or further conjugated with biological and bioactive species for optical bioimaging of cancer cells and tissues [16]. However, as a new kind of fluorescent nanoprobes, the optical properties of carbogenic NPs are not thoroughly investigated, and their application for quantitative analysis is still rare.

In our study, we adopted a simple and inexpensive hydrothermal decomposition approach to synthesize the fluorescent carbogenic NPs and investigated their fluorescence properties in detail. It was found that the fluorescence of carbogenic NPs was stable with the variance of environmental conditions such as pH, temperature and UV irradiation. Interestingly, we also found out that the fluorescence of carbogenic NPs was selectively sensitive to the ferric ions. Accordingly, we proposed a new method for the determination of ferrous succinate in pharmaceutical tablets based on the fluorescence quenching of carbogenic NPs and the results were satisfactory.

Section snippets

Apparatus

The absorption spectrum was acquired on a UV2100 UV–vis spectrometer (Shimadzu, Japan). Fluorescence spectra were recorded on an RF-5301 spectrofluorophotometer (Shimadzu, Japan) equipped with a 1 cm quartz cell. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of the carbogenic NPs was acquired on a Philips FEI Tecnai 20 G2 S-TWIN transmission electron microscope (Philips, Netherlands). TGL-16 platform high-speed centrifuge (Hengfeng Equipment Factory, Jintan, China) was applied for

Characterization of the carbogenic NPs

The UV–vis absorption spectrum of carbogenic NPs aqueous solution in Fig. 1(A) revealed the absorption band was at 347 nm. Upon irradiation with a 365 nm UV lamp, it was found to emit blue luminescence. The fluorescence spectra of carbogenic NPs were measured with the excitation wavelength set from 280 to 500 nm by a 20 nm increment. The corresponding spectra are given in Fig. 1(B). As can be seen, when the excitation wavelength was between 280 and 400 nm, the fluorescence intensities firstly

Conclusion

In summary, water-soluble carbogenic NPs were prepared by a facile hydrothermal decomposition approach in this paper. It was found that the fluorescence of carbogenic NPs was stable with the variance of environmental conditions such as pH, temperature and UV irradiation. In addition, carbogenic NPs were found to be a kind of satisfactory selective Fe3+ probe in physiological buffer solution. Based on this feature, a new fluorometric method for quantitative analysis of ferrous succinate in

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