N-doped carbon dots from pericarpium citri reticulatae for wide linear range sensing of hydroquinone

AbstractAbstractHydroquinone (H2Q) present in water is becoming a growing problem in both daily life and industry, with various harmful effects on human health. Therefore, the detection of H2Q is very important. The Carbon dot-based sensor is considered an effective method to detect H2Q. In this work, Pericarpium citri reticulatae carbon dots (P-CDs) were synthesized by a one-pot hydrothermal method for wide linear sensing of H2Q. An orthogonal test was used to expand the active site and fluorescence properties of P-CDs. Under optimal conditions, the P-CDs exhibit an extremely stable blue fluorescence and a quantum yield (QY) of up to 15.4%. In the range of 5–1000 μM, compared with the currently reported carbon dot-based H2Q sensors, the fluorescence intensity (FL) of P-CDs shows good linearity with the variation of H2Q concentration and a higher linear range. Moreover, the sensor demonstrates a low detection limit of 0.058 μM. The possible detection mechanism is based on the synergistic action of static quenching and IFE. This method has been successfully applied to the determination of H2Q in real samples, and the P-CDs-based sensor has the potential to detect H2Q in various complex scenes.Graphical abstractIn this work, high quantum yield (15.4%) biomass-based carbon dots by orthogonal experimental were synthesized and a wide linear range of 5–1000 uM for the detection of hydroquinone was developed. P-CDs displayed the highest linear range of hydroquinone sensing to date compared to carbon point-based sensors and were successfully used in real water samples. Moreover, we expanded the possible detection mechanism based on the previous study.HIGHLIGHTSN-doped biomass carbon dots are facilely derived from pericarpium citri reticulatae powder and urea.Doping of exogenous N is decisive for the sensing of hydroquinone by P-CDs.Exogenous N-doped P-CDs have a high QY of 15.4% and enable sensing over a wide linear range of H2Q from 5 to 1000 μM, the detection limit is as low as 0.058 μM.The fluorescence detection of hydroquinone is based on the synergistic action of static quenching and IFE.P-CDs based sensor has been successfully used for real sample detection.Keywords: Biomass carbon dotswide linear rangehydroquinone sensorreaction mechanism Disclosure statementThe 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.Additional informationFundingThe authors thank National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC No. 21702143), Jiangsu National Natural Science Foundation (BK2017377) and Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (SJCX21_1400) for financial supports.