On-site, rapid, and facile determination of gentamicin using a fluorescent resonance energy transfer sensor constructed from nitrogen-carbon quantum dots functionalized by 4,5-imidazole dicarboxylic acid

Abstract In this paper, N-C QDs were obtained from agricultural waste (wheat straw), functionalized by 4,5-imidazole dicarboxylic acid and used to detect gentamicin in aqueous solution. The N-C QDs were characterized by HRTEM, XPS, UV-Vis, etc. The fluorescence properties of the functionalized N-C QDs for GEN detection were studied at λem=385 nm. The fluorescence intensity showed a good linear relationship with the GEN concentration of samples (I =343.10 + 30.07C, R2 = 0.9896) for GEN concentrations ranging from 0 to 2.9×10−4 mol/L. The sensing mechanism was found to be fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between the functionalized N-C QDs and GEN. The results indicated that the method had good repeatability for GEN detection. The technology could be extended to biological detection.