A chemiluminescence resonance energy transfer for the determination of indolyl acetic acid using luminescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots as acceptors

Abstract

A chemiluminescence resonance energy transfer (CRET) method was fabricated for the determination of indolyl acetic acid (IAA) by using Ce(IV)–Na₂SO₃ in a chemiluminescence (CL) reaction as the donor and luminescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) as the acceptor. The CL intensity from the redox reaction of Ce(IV) and Na₂SO₃ in acidic medium increased significantly in the presence of N-CDs because the absorption band of N-CDs perfectly overlapped with the luminescence spectra of excited SO₂ from the reaction of Ce(IV)–Na₂SO₃. Further, IAA was observed to inhibit the CL signal of the N-CDs–Ce(IV)–Na₂SO₃ system, which made it applicable for the determination of IAA. The linear range was 2.0 × 10⁻⁸–1.0 × 10⁻⁶ mol L⁻¹ and the detection limit was 5.6 × 10⁻⁹ mol L⁻¹. This work is not only of importance for gaining a better understanding of the unique optical and physical chemistry properties of doping carbon dots with heteroatoms but also has great potential to find CL applications in many fields.