A fluorescent organic nanoparticles-based sensor synthesized through hydrothermal process and its application in sensing Hg 2+ of real samples and fast visual detection.

The fluorescent organic nanoparticles (FONs)-based sensor has been attracting great attention in recent years. There are still big challenges in the preparation and application of FONs-based sensor. In this study, a FONs-based sensor was designed and developed through facile hydrothermal process using 3-perylenecarboxaldehyde (PlCA) as the fluorophore and L-methionine (Met) as the recognition site for mercury ions. According to the experimental results, the fluorescence intensity of the as-prepared PlCA-M would decrease when adding Hg ²⁺ and the mechanism was extrapolated to be photoinduced electron transfer inducing by specific coordination interaction. The acquired PlCA-M-based sensor was used to monitor Hg ²⁺ in several real samples (environmental water, tea, and apple) with the limit of detection being 60 nM. Remarkably, a visual detection device based on FONs, SDS-PAAG (sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel) @PlCA-M was firstly constructed and successfully used to Hg ²⁺ semi-quantitation by naked eyes. In addition, the acquired FONs was applied into imaging tool for security information detection and identified as solid-state luminescent material for the first time.
Competing Interests: 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.
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