A high sensitive and selective fluorescent probe for dopamine detection based on water soluble AgInS2 quantum dots

Herein, a water soluble AgInS2 quantum dots (AIS QDs) with high sensitive and selective for dopamine (DA) were prepared through a clean and facile reflux method with the mercapto propionic acid (MPA) and polyethyleneimine (PEI) used as the co-modifiers. The fluorescence quench of as-fabricated MS QDs displayed an excellent selectivity and sensitivity to the DA and they showed a good linear relationship with the low detection limit (2.84 nm) in the range of 0.5-300 mu mol/L. The mechanism of fluorescence quench may attributed to the photoinduced electrons migrated from MS QDs to dopamine quinone, which originated from the oxidization of DA by ambient O-2. Our work shows a promising prospect of designing and preparing AIS QDs used as the fluorescence sensors for DA detection.