Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Dot and CdTe Quantum Dot Dual-Color Multifunctional Fluorescent Sensing Platform: Sensing Behavior and Glucose and pH Detection.

A novel fluorescent probe based on a nitrogen-doped carbon dot (N-CD) and CdTe quantum dot (CdTe QD) platform has been constructed for HO/glucose detection and pH sensing. In this work, HO-tolerant blue fluorescence N-CDs were added to the HO-mediated yellow fluorescence quenching of CdTe QDs to construct a dual-color ratiometric fluorescent HO probe. HO-induced passivated group detachment and action on deep nanocrystals promoted CdTe QD fluorescence quenching. Meanwhile, the addition of the blue fluorescent background of N-CDs sharply reflected the color change in CdTe QDs. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the platform was effectively applied to the detection of HO produced by the enzymatic reaction of glucose, showing high sensitivity (limit of detection 7.86 μM) and wide linear range (26-900 μM) for glucose detection. The pH-sensing behavior of CdTe QDs and N-CDs was attributed to the displacement of a weak acid (3-mercaptopropionic acid) by a strong acid (HCl) and the acid titration process of two coexisting bases (N-CDs and NH·HO), respectively. The loss of passivation and doping effects led to a decrease in the fluorescence intensity of CdTe QDs and N-CDs. Moreover, utilizing the ability of bimaterial system fluorescence to pH sensing, a semiquantitative pH detection based on the linear response was developed. The pH range was analyzed by three kinds of N-CD ( = 440 nm) and CdTe QD ( = 548 nm) typical emission spectral shapes. In addition, the recovery results showed that the bimaterial system was proved to be appropriate for the assay of glucose in spiked serum samples.