Sensitive and selective spectrofluorimetric determination of clonazepam using nitrogen-doped carbon dots

In this study, a novel fluorescence sensor using Carbon Dots (CDs) doped with nitrogen as sensing materials was introduced for fast and selective determination of Clonazepam. Ammonia was used as a nitrogen source to dope CDs with nitrogen atoms. It was observed that, the fluorescence intensity of CDs increased intensively after doping. Under optimal conditions, the fluorescence intensity of CDs decreased by the increase of Clonazepam concentration and a blue shift was observed in maximum wavelength to lower wavelengths of about 15 nm. CDs showed blue fluorescence at 430 nm by excitation at 340 nm. This fluorescent sensor was successfully used to quantify Clonazepam in the linear ranges 5 x 10(-8)M to 7 x 10(-6)M with a limit of detection equal to 1.2 x 10(-8)M. The proposed method was successfully applied for determination of Clonazepam in plasma and tablet dosages offering the some advantages such as high sensitivity and selectivity toward similar compounds, ease of operation, low cost, high quantum yield of 31% and rapid response time.