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Arginine–malate-based dual-emission carbon dots for uric acid determination in human serum with a miniaturized device

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Abstract

Determination of uric acid is very important for the clinical diagnosis of several diseases correlated with their variations in human serum. In this work, dual-emission arginine carbon dots (Arg-CDs) were synthesized for the determination of uric acid (UA). After optimization, the obtained Arg-CD was excited at 360 nm, which exhibited dual-emission fluorescence peaks at 445 nm and 514 nm, respectively. Because of the electrostatic interaction between the secondary amine group in UA and the carboxyl group on the Arg-CD, the formation of hydrogen bonds between the ketone/hydroxyl group in the UA molecule and the amino group on the surface of Arg-CD, the mixture could cause the fluorescent signal to be activated. Particularly, Arg-CD showed a good line relationship to UA between 330 and 630 µM (the concentration of uric acid in the serum for healthy people is 240–520 μM), and the lower detection limits are 7.14 µM. With the high selectivity and sensitivity to uric acid, Arg-CD could be applied in the UA determination of the human serum samples, whose accuracy rate was in the range of 98.5–101.5% and relative standard deviation (RSD) value was lower than 4%. And we also designed a miniaturized device for UA determination conveniently.

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Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41773106).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Xiaoqiu Gan, Fangyuan Gu & Kewen Zheng

  2. College of Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Elvi Angelina & Lei Cui

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  1. Xiaoqiu Gan
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  2. Elvi Angelina
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  3. Fangyuan Gu
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  5. Lei Cui
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Correspondence to Kewen Zheng or Lei Cui.

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Gan, X., Angelina, E., Gu, F. et al. Arginine–malate-based dual-emission carbon dots for uric acid determination in human serum with a miniaturized device. J Mater Sci 57, 576–588 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06660-0

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