Abstract
Carbon dot (CD)-based multi-mode sensing has drawn much attention owing to its wider application range and higher availability compared with single-mode sensing. Herein, a simple and green methodology to construct a CD-based dual-mode fluorescent sensor from the waste biomass of flowers of wintersweet (FW-CDs) for parallel and semi-quantitative visual detection of Cr(VI) and Fe3+ was firstly reported. The FW-CD fluorescent probe had a high sensitivity to Cr(VI) and Fe3+ with wide ranges of linearity from 0.1 to 60 µM and 0.05 to 100 µM along with low detection limits (LOD) of 0.07 µM and 0.15 µM, respectively. Accordingly, the FW-CD-based dual-mode sensor had an excellent parallel sensing capacity toward Cr(VI) and Fe3+ with high selectivity and strong anti-interference capability by co-using dual-functional integration and dual-masking strategies. The developed parallel sensing platform was successfully applied to Cr(VI) and Fe3+ quantitative detection in real samples with high precision and good recovery. More importantly, a novel FW-CD-based fluorescent hydrogel sensor was fabricated and first applied in the parallel and semi-quantitative visual detection of Cr(VI) and ferrous ions in industrial effluent and iron supplements, further demonstrating the significant advantage of parallel and visual sensing strategies.
Highlights
Over the past 10 years, fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) have gained much attention in many areas such as photocatalysis [1,2], chemical sensing [3,4], biological imaging [5,6] and drug delivery [7], which have benefited from their unique advantages, including excellent fluorescence performance, good biocompatibility and modifiable functionalities [8,9]
A novel multifunctional fluorescent sensor based on waste-biomassderived flowers of wintersweet (FW)-CDs has been rationally prepared by co-using the dual-functional integration and dual-masking strategies for the parallel visual detection of Cr(VI) and Fe3+ with high specificity and sensitivity
Profiting from the diverse surface functional groups of the fabricated biomass-derived FW-CDs, the synthesized FW-CDs had an excellent parallel sensing ability toward Cr(VI) and Fe3+, which was much lower than the corresponding values of all the previously reported CD-based Cr(VI)/Fe3+ dual-mode sensors
Summary
Over the past 10 years, fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) have gained much attention in many areas such as photocatalysis [1,2], chemical sensing [3,4], biological imaging [5,6] and drug delivery [7], which have benefited from their unique advantages, including excellent fluorescence performance, good biocompatibility and modifiable functionalities [8,9]. Multiple recognition and sensing functions might be integrated in one “green” CD-based fluorescent sensor through variant fluorescence-quenching [21] or -enhancement [22] mechanisms, which would endow “green” CDs with a wider application range and higher availability. It is essential to explore the huge potential of biomass-derived “green” CDs to fabricate CD-based multifunctional sensors for parallel detection with high specificity. To our knowledge, there is no research aimed at exploring the potential application of FW as the novel carbon source for fabricating multifunctional “green” CDs. The pollution caused by the excessive discharge of heavy metal ions has a strong adverse effect on environmental safety and human health [40]. The ultrapure water was prepared by an ultrapure water system (Aquaplore, AWL-1002-H)
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