The abuse of tetracycline
(TC) antibiotics causes the accumulation
of their residue in the environment, which has an irreversible impact
on food safety and human health. In light of this, it is vital to
offer a portable, quick, efficient, and selective sensing platform
to detect TC instantly. Herein, we have successfully developed a sensor
using silk fibroin-decorated thiol-branched graphene oxide quantum
dots through a well-known thiol-ene click reaction. It is applied
to ratiometric fluorescence sensing of TC in real samples in the linear
range of 0–90 nM, with the detection limit of 49.69, 47.76,
55.25, 47.90, and 45.78 nM for deionized water, chicken sample, fish
sample, human blood serum, and honey sample, respectively. With the
gradual addition of TC to the liquid media, the sensor develops a
synergetic luminous effect in which the fluorescence intensity of
the nanoprobe steadily declines at 413 nm, while the intensity of
a newly emerging peak increases at 528 nm, maintaining a ratio that
is dependent on the analyte concentration. The increase of luminescence
properties in the liquid media is clearly visible by naked eyes in
the presence of 365 nm UV light. The result helps us in building a
filter paper strip-based portable smart sensor using an electric circuit
comprising a 365 nm LED (light-emitting diode) powered by a mobile
phone battery which is attached just below the rear camera of a smartphone.
The camera of the smartphone captures the color changes that occur
throughout the sensing process and translates into readable RGB data.
The dependency of color intensity with respect to the concentration
of TC was evaluated by deducing a calibration curve from where the
limit of detection was calculated and found to be 0.125 μM.
These kinds of gadgets are important for the possible real-time, on-the-spot,
quick detection of analytes in situations where high-end approaches
are not easily accessible.