Carbon dots were synthesized by a simple and green strategy for selective and sensitive Cu(2+) ion detection using both down and upconversion fluorescence. These fluorescent nanosensors show low cytotoxicity and are applied for intracellular sensing and imaging of Cu(2+) in biological systems.
Chamarro, J. (2014). Microsystem-assisted synthesis of carbon dots with fluorescent and colorimetric properties for pH detection. Nanoscale, 6, pp. 6018-6024. The present paper describes the use of a microfluidic system to synthesize carbon dots (Cdots) and their use as optical pH sensors. The synthesis is based on the thermal decomposition of ascorbic acid in dimethyl sulfoxide. The proposed microsystem is composed of a fluidic and a thermal platform, which enable proper control of synthesis variables. Uniform and monodispersed 3.3 nm-sized Cdots have been synthesized, the optical characterization of which showed their down/upconversion luminescence and colorimetric properties. The obtained Cdots have been used for pH detection with down and upconverison fluorescent properties as excitation sources. The naked eye or a photographic digital camera has also been implemented as detection systems with the hue parameter showing a linear pH range from 3.5 to 10.2. On the other hand, experiments on the cytotoxicity and permeability of the Cdots on human embryonic kidney cells revealed their adsorption on cells without causing any impact on the cellular morphology.The recent application of uorescent nanoparticles (NPs) such as quantum dots, dye-doped NPs and rare earth-based NPs in biomedical sensing and imaging has become a major subject of research over the last few years. Although a wide range of diverse photoluminescent NPs have been developed from new materials, an increased concern about their potential environmental and human health toxicity exists.1 Moreover, there are some NP-associated drawbacks such as modication of their surface for a particular function which involves highly timeconsuming processes.At the moment, one of the most attractive NPs are carbon dots (Cdots), which have recently had a major relevance in analytical and bioanalytical chemistry mainly due to their excellent luminescent properties and high biocompatibility as well as their low cost synthesis.2 However, although these Cdots are very promising NPs in nanotechnology and nanobiomedicine, much research needs to be done either to investigate their potential in sensor development or to identify novel synthesis approaches. In addition, Cdots show size dependent photoluminescence and upconversion luminescence properties leading to anti-Stokes type emissions.
One of the main limiting factors in optical sensing arrays is the reproducibility in the preparation, typically by spin coating and drop casting techniques, which produce membranes that are not fully homogeneous. In this paper, we increase the discriminatory power of colorimetric arrays by increasing the reproducibility in the preparation by inkjet printing and measuring the color from the image of the array acquired by a digital camera, using the H coordinate of the HSV color space as the analytical parameter, which produces robust and precise measurements. A disposable 31 mm × 19 mm nylon membrane with 35 sensing areas with 7 commercial chromogenic reagents makes it possible to identify 13 metal ions and to determine mixtures with up to 5 ions using a two-stage neural network approach with higher accuracy than with previous approaches.
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