A Smartphone-assisted Paper-based Analytical Device for Fluorescence Assay of Hg²⁺

Abstract

Rapid, efficiency and portable detection systems in low-resource settings with limited laboratory equipment and technical expertise are urgently needed. Herein, an integrated platform composed of a paper-based analytical device and a smartphone detection system for Hg²⁺ onsite testing was developed. Nitrogen-doped carbon dots(N-CDs) were synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method using citric acid as the carbon source and ethanediamine as the nitrogen source, which gave out bright blue fluorescence under the excitation at 350 nm UV light and the absolute fluorescence quantum yield was 17.1%. The fluorescence of the prepared N-CDs can be effectively quenched by Hg²⁺. In addition, an external attachment of smartphone for illumination and external light interference was designed to trace the fluorescence signals, and a software application of Android system with simple operation program was developed to perform snapshot and image processing. The smartphone-assisted detection system was combined with the N-CDs decorated paper chip to achieve the sensitive detection of Hg²⁺ in water samples. This integrated method for reliable sensing of Hg²⁺ shows a good linear detection range of 10–800 µmol/L(R ²=0.9595) with detection limit of 1.07×10⁻⁸ mol/L.

Keywords

Paper-based analytical device / Nitrogen-doped carbon dot / Integrated sensing platform / Mercury ion

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