Abstract
Porous graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) was prepared by a one-step acid etching and ultrasonication process. It is found that the strong blue fluorescence of g-C3N4 (with excitation/emission maxima at 320/400 nm) is fairly selectively quenched by uric acid (UA). The morphology and chemical structure of the nanoporous g-C3N4 were characterized by XRD, TEM and FTIR. Quenching studies and Stern-Volmer plots reveal two UA concentration ranges of different quenching efficiency. The first extends from 50 to 500 nM, the other from 0.5 to 10 μM. The limit of detection is 8.4 nM. The two quenching processes are attributed to both dynamic and static quenching. The porous g-C3N4 probes were applied to the determination of UA in (spiked) human serum and human plasma, and the results were as good as those obtained with UA standard solutions. These data illustrate that g-C3N4 can be used to selectively and sensitively quantify trace levels of UA even in a complex environment.
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Acknowledgements
The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51572127, 21576138), Program for NCET-12-0629, Ph.D. Program Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (No.20133219110018), Six Major Talent Summit (XNY-011), PAPD of Jiangsu Province, and the program for Science and Technology Innovative Research Team in Universities of Jiangsu Province, China. We also thank Dr. Wanying Tang at Analysis and Test Center Nanjing University of Science and Technology for the infrared spectrum data collection.
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YunYang, Lei, W., Xu, Y. et al. Determination of trace uric acid in serum using porous graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) as a fluorescent probe. Microchim Acta 185, 39 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-017-2533-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-017-2533-4