Exploration of carbon dots derived from epimedium towards detecting dopamine and hydrogen peroxide

Abstract Herein, an innovative method to synthesize carbon dots (CDs) has been successfully established, and these CDs emitted the yellow fluorescence while epimedium served as the carbon source. To be specific, the CDs prepared here were equipped with the functional groups of -COOH, -NH2, -OH, C C and C O, providing the possibility of functioning as the fluorescent sensor. Importantly, introducing dopamine leaded to their fluorescence quenching of the as-prepared CDs, which was due to the electrostatic interaction between CDs and DA. Meanwhile, the proposed CDs achieved detecting DA with the linear range of 1.0 × 10−7 to 1.0 × 10−3 M at a detection limit of 8.7 × 10−8 M. Moreover, the further addition of H2O2 gradually resulted in the fluorescence recovering through destroying the electrostatic interaction as the concentration of H2O2 varied from 10−6 to 10−2 M with the detection limit of 7.2 × 10−7 M. Thereby, the CDs described here exhibited the potentiality of broadening the ways for assaying DA and H2O2.