Sensitive detections for three kinds of vitamin B in aqueous solution and on test paper by fluorescent dual-emission carbon dots.

ABSTRACT

Although a few of fluorescent probes based on carbon dots (CDs) for vitamin B (VB) determination have been emerged, none of them can realize the detection of different kinds of VB. In this paper, nitrogen, chlorine co-doped dual-emission CDs (N, Cl-CDs) with emissions at 404 nm and 595 nm have been easily synthesized. VB2, VB9 and VB12 can all induce obvious fluorescence turn-off response toward the N, Cl-CDs. Based on that, three types of VBs are quantitatively and sensitively evaluated in aqueous solution with wide concentration ranges of 14.9-135.0 µM, 34.7-89.8 µM and 29.8-79.8 µM, respectively. Importantly, visual semiquantitative detection of VBs on a test strip are also proposed. Moreover, the current N, Cl-CDs have been successfully applied to the detection of VBs in real samples. The N, Cl-CDs are sensitively multifunctional sensors for three kinds of VBs in aqueous solution and the visual semiquantitative detection by test paper assay is simple, portable and inexpensive.