Green Synthesis of Fluorescent Carbon Dots from Cherry Tomatoes for Highly Effective Detection of Trifluralin Herbicide in Soil Samples

A simple, economical and green synthesis method for the preparation of water-soluble carbon quantum dots (CQDs) has been developed via hydrothermal treatment of fresh cherry tomatoes without any other reagents. The as-prepared CQDs exhibited excellent excitation-wavelength-dependent photoluminescence property and high selective response to trifluralin over other selected herbicide in soil samples, thus, a CQDs-based sensing platform for trifluralin determination was established by evaluating the change of the fluorescence intensity of CQDs with trifluralin. Under the optimized conditions, the sensing system displayed a linear relationship with the trifluralin concentrations in the range of 0.050-200 mu M, and the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.5 nM. Satisfactory repeatability, reproducibility, recovery results (94.6-103.2%) are achieved for the determination of trifluralin in real soil samples. Real sample study in soil samples revealed that the proposed sensing system was promising for applications in environmental monitoring.