Microfluidic chemistry assisted synthesis of cobalt quantum dot embedded nitrogen doped carbon with oxidase-like properties toward ascorbic acid detection

Abstract

Ascorbic acid (AA) is a powerful antioxidant in food safety and disease treatment. It is of great significance to develop a low-cost, high-stability, and easy-to-operate colorimetric method for quantitative detection of AA in food or human body. Although various nanozymes have been developed for the colorimetric detection of AA, the size regulation of the catalytic center of nanozymes remains a challenge. In this work, we propose a combined strategy of flow chemistry synthesis and pyrolysis to realize the controllable adjustment of the catalytic center size of nanozymes. Zinc-cobalt zeolitic imidazole frameworks (ZnCo-ZIFs) with different sizes are synthesized by flow chemistry. Nitrogen-doped carbon materials with different Co catalytic centers (80 nm–10 nm) are then obtained by pyrolysis of ZnCo-ZIFs precursors. Among them, cobalt quantum dot embedded nitrogen-doped carbon (Co QDs/N-C) exhibits excellent oxidase activity, with Vmax and Km of 4.19 × 10−7 M s−1 and 0.12 mM. Therefore, a simple, low-cost, and stable colorimetric method for the detection of AA is established with a good linear relationship (3–500 μM) and low detection limit (0.40 μM). This work has certain guiding significance for the size regulation of catalytic center of nanozyme, and the detection method has broad application prospects in biochemical sensing field.