Self-assembly of manganese doped zinc sulfide quantum dots/CTAB nanohybrids for detection of rutin

Quantum dots (QDs) nanohybrids are an effective route to obtain new property of materials, and are very significant for developing specific materials and improving the performance of existing QDs materials. The objectives of this work are to prepare MPA-capped Mn-doped ZnS QDs/CTAB nanohybrids (MPA: 3-mercaptopropionic acid; CTAB: cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide) through electrostatic self-assembly, to investigate the formation mechanism and the Room-Temperature Phosphorescenee (RTP) changes, and to explore the possibility of their application in detection of rutin. As a result, MPA-capped Mn-doped ZnS QDs/CTAB nanohybrids greatly improve the rutin detection ability of QDs and provide an important method for developing more convenient and effective rutin detection sensor. The sensor for rutin gave a detection limit of 0.037 mg L-1 and two linear ranges from 0.05 to 0.5 mg L-1 and from 0.5 to 5 mg L-1, and thus can be expanded to selective detection of other substances. Since the present QDs-based RTP method does not need deoxidants or other inducers as conventional RTP detection methods, and avoids interference from autofluorescence and the scattering light of the matrix that are encountered in spectrofluorometry, this method can be used to detect the content of rutin in body fluid. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.