Berberine hydrochloride (BHC), a natural isoquinoline alkaloid, is widely applied as a an agent in traditional Chinese medicine. Almost all the traditional methods for BHC detection require complicated preprocessing steps or expensive instruments. In this article, we report a simple, rapid, sensitive, and selective method for BHC detection using fluorescent gold nanoclusters (F-AuNCs) as the fluorescent probe with a large Stokes shift of 237 nm. The F-AuNCs prepared with citrate-stabilized stannous chloride and hydrogen tetrachloroaurate(III) as raw materials in an aqueous medium display strong and stable fluorescence at 566 nm. When F-AuNCs are mixed with BHC, the fluorescence of F-AuNCs is effectively quenched. Under optimized conditions, this method allows sensitive and selective measurements of BHC in a concentration ranging from 1.0 × 10^-6 to 1.0 × 10^-4 mol L^-1 with a detection limit of 7.5 × 10^-8 mol L^-1, which is relatively low among reported spectral methods. This method provides excellent selectivity for the detection of BHC against inorganic anions and natural amino acids. In addition, the BHC content in two different types of berberine tablets was successfully determined by this method and the results showed high accuracy.

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盐酸小ber碱（BHC）是一种天然的异喹啉生物碱，被广泛用作中药制剂。几乎所有用于BHC检测的传统方法都需要复杂的预处理步骤或昂贵的仪器。在本文中，我们报告了一种简单，快速，灵敏且选择性的方法，该方法使用荧光金纳米簇（F-AuNCs）作为具有237 nm的大斯托克斯位移的荧光探针进行BHC检测。以柠檬酸盐稳定的氯化亚锡和四氯金酸氢盐（III）为原料在水性介质中制备的F-AuNCs在566 nm处显示强而稳定的荧光。当F-AuNCs与BHC混合时，F-AuNCs的荧光被有效淬灭。在最佳条件下，该方法可以灵敏和选择性地测量BHC的浓度范围为1.0×10^-6至1.0×10 ^-4 mol L ^-1，检测限为7.5×10 ^-8 mol L ^-1，在报道的光谱方法中相对较低。该方法为检测BHC对无机阴离子和天然氨基酸提供了出色的选择性。此外，该方法成功测定了两种不同类型的小ber碱片中的六六六（BHC）含量，结果显示出较高的准确性。

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