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Ce3+-induced Fluorescence Amplification of Copper Nanoclusters Based on Aggregation-induced Emission for Specific Sensing 2,6-pyridine Dicarboxylic Acid

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Abstract

A straightforward, cost-effective and biocompatible reduction approach was applied to fabricate soluble but non-luminous glutathione-stabilized copper nanocluster (GSH-CuNCs). Surprisingly, as high as 1 × 103 times fluorescence enhancement was acquired when Ce3+ was injected at an extremely low concentration of only 18 µM. Ce3+ outperformed other rare-earth metal ions in terms of inducing fluorescence amplification of the non-luminous GSH-CuNCs. Furthermore, Ce3+ was employed as inducer for aggregation-induce emission (AIE) effect as well as reactant to coordinate with target of 2,6-pyridine dicarboxylic acid (DPA) due to the stronger coordination ability between Ce3+ and DPA than that of Ce3+ and GSH. As a result, the Ce3+/GSH-CuNCs ensemble was developed as a novel sensor to detect DPA in the "on–off" mode. When DPA was introduced into the sensor, Ce3+ failed to interact with GSH and detached from the surface of GSH-CuNCs, leading to fluorescence quenching. In addition, static quenching process and internal filtration effect (IFE) between Ce3+/GSH-CuNCs and DPA were also responsible for fluorescence quenching effect. A good linear relationship was obtained from 0.3 µM to 18 µM, with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.19 µM. The as-proposed probe displayed high specificity to DPA and provided a simple, fast rapid and cheap method for construction this type of ensemble sensors to detect other targets.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included within the article and its supplementary information files.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Material Science, Shanxi Normal University, Taiyuan, 030006, People’s Republic of China

    Jingxiang Shen & Zhefeng Fan

  2. Department of Chemistry, Changzhi University, Changzhi, 046011, People’s Republic of China

    Jingxiang Shen

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Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by JS; The first draft of the manuscript was written by JS; review, supervision and editing were performed by ZF.

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Correspondence to Zhefeng Fan.

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Shen, J., Fan, Z. Ce3+-induced Fluorescence Amplification of Copper Nanoclusters Based on Aggregation-induced Emission for Specific Sensing 2,6-pyridine Dicarboxylic Acid. J Fluoresc 33, 135–144 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-022-03044-8

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