Microwave-assisted rapid synthesis of ovalbumin-stabilized gold nanoclusters for picric acid determination

Abstract

In this work, ovalbumin-stabilized gold nanoclusters (OVA-Au NCs) fluorescent nanoprobes were synthesized by microwave heating and applied to detect picric acid (PA). The nanoprobes emitted red fluorescence with the maximum fluorescence peak of 680 nm under the excitation wavelength of 350 nm, and the Stokes shifts could be up to 330 nm which could effectively eliminate the interference of resonance scattering light. Compared with hydrothermal method, the synthesis method was simple and fast, and only took 50 s. Due to the absorption peak of PA overlapped with the emission peak of OVA-Au NCs in a large range, PA could selectively quench the fluorescence of OVA-Au NCs based on the inner filter effect (IFE) and a quick response time (1 min). Therefore, a new and sensitive method for PA monitoring was established. Under the optimal conditions, the concentration of PA demonstrated a satisfactory linear correlation with the fluorescence quenching degree ΔF/F₀ of the sensing system in the range of 20–240 µmol/L with the detection limit of 6.4 µmol/L. The proposed method is simple, fast, accurate, and easy to realize real-time monitoring.

Keywords

ovalbumin-stabilized gold nanoclusters (OVA-Au NCs) / microwave-assist / rapid synthesis / picric acid

References

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