Nitrogen-doped carbon dots as efficient turn-on fluorescent probe for assay of organophosphorus pesticides

Abstract

Concerns regarding human health and food safety have generated interest in developing simple, accurate, and cost-effective strategies for evaluating organophosphorus pesticide (OP) residues. In this study, nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) were synthesized from a common low-cost precursor via a simple pyrolysis process. The fluorescence of the N-CDs can be suppressed by p-nitrophenol, which is the hydrolysis product of the p-nitrophenyl phosphate salt catalyzed by alkaline phosphatase (ALP). A fluorescent turn-on assay for the inhibitory effect of glyphosate was developed with a low detection limit and wide linear range. Moreover, the feasibility of visualizing OPs in vegetables was demonstrated by the fluorescence imaging of glyphosate on cabbage leaves. This research not only offers a facile method for the synthesis of highly fluorescent CDs but also inspires the development of effective multi-mode sensing platforms that include fluorescent testing and imaging for monitoring pesticide residues.

Keywords

Nitrogen-doped carbon dots / Alkaline phosphatase / Organophosphorus pesticides / Logic gates / Fluorescence imaging

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jiqing Zhang: Writing - original draft, Investigation, Data curation. Shushu Chu: Formal analysis, Data curation. Chenyu Tao: Visualization, Software. Jinghao Yan: Visualization, Resources. Yuanyuan Jiang: Writing - review & editing, Supervision. Yizhong Lu: Writing review & editing, Funding acquisition.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22172063 and 21902062), Young Taishan Scholar Program (tsqn201812080), and Independent Cultivation Program of Innovation Team of Ji'nan City (2021GXRC052). In addition, we thank Prof. Hua Zhang of the University of Jinan for providing access to the equipment for fluorescence imaging using inverted fluorescence microscopy.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.chphma.2024.07.003.

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