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Chemiluminescent determination of L-cysteine with the lucigenin-carbon dot system

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Abstract

This work describes a new chemiluminescence (CL) system that is composed of lucigenin and carbon dots (CDs). The CDs display absorption peak at 260 nm and fluorescence with a emission peak centered at 524 nm (photo-excited at 470 nm). They were synthesized by hydrothermal treatment of starch and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, UV-vis absorption spectra and fluorescence spectra. The effects of oxygen and free radical scavengers on the CL system and on the CL spectra were investigated to elucidate the CL mechanism. It is found that L-cysteine (Cys) enhances the blue CL of the lucigenin-CD system by 59%. The finding was used to design a method for the determination of Cys. CL increases linearly in the 10.0 to 100 μM Cys concentration range, and the detection limit is 8.8 μM (at an S/N ratio of 3). The assay is highly selective over other amino acids. Conceivably, this novel CL system paves the way to numerous new assays based on the use of lucigenin.

Schematic representation of the carbon dots enhanced lucigenin chemiluminesence.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21675148, 21674066, 21874126 and 21804127), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0201300), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)-the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) President’s Fellowship Program, and the Ministry of Education of Liaoning Province, China (No. L2016022).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin, 541004, China

    Chao Wang, Yixiang Lan, Jianping Li & Guobao Xu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, 130022, People’s Republic of China

    Chao Wang, Yixiang Lan, Fan Yuan, Tadesse Haile Fereja, Baohua Lou & Guobao Xu

  3. University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Fan Yuan, Baohua Lou & Guobao Xu

  4. University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquanlu, Beijing, 100049, China

    Tadesse Haile Fereja

  5. College of Applied Chemistry, Shenyang University of Chemical Technology, Shenyang, 110142, People’s Republic of China

    Shuang Han

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  1. Chao Wang
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Correspondence to Shuang Han, Jianping Li or Guobao Xu.

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Wang, C., Lan, Y., Yuan, F. et al. Chemiluminescent determination of L-cysteine with the lucigenin-carbon dot system. Microchim Acta 187, 50 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-019-3965-9

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