A flow injection fluorescence "turn-on" sensor for the determination of metformin hydrochloride based on the inner filter effect of nitrogen-doped carbon dots/gold nanoparticles double-probe

Abstract

In this paper, an ultrasensitive and rapid "turn-on" fluorescence sensor, integrating flow-injection (FI) with nitrogen-doped carbon dots/gold nanoparticles (N-CDs/AuNPs) double-probe is established for the determination of metformin hydrochloride (MET) in biological fluids. The sensing strategy involves the weak inner filter effect between AuNPs and N-CDs due to aggregation products of MET with AuNPs. Unfortunately, the degree of AuNPs aggregation is difficult to control through manual assays, resulting in intolerable measurement error that limits further applications. However, the proposed method overcomes the above problem, and significantly lowers the consumption of expensive reagents (AuNPs: about 60 μL per test). Under optimal conditions, the fluorescence intensity at 400 nm excitation and 505 nm emission wavelengths display a linear correlation with MET concentration (5-100 μg L^-1) and the limit of detection is 2.32 μg L^-1 (3.3 S/k). The advantages of the presented method include high sensitivity, rapid speed (60 sample h^-1), good accuracy and precision (RSD ≤ 2.1%, n = 11) and low cost. Since MET is the first-line hypoglycemic agent in patients with type II diabetes, this method can preliminarily determine MET content in urine samples, giving satisfactory results.

Keywords: Flow injection; Fluorescence; Gold nanoparticles; Metformin; Nitrogen-doped carbon dots.