Highly efficient determination of trace ascorbic acid in vitamin C tablets by boronate affinity-modified magnetic metal–organic frameworks

Ascorbic acid (AA) plays an important role in many life processes. The chronic nutritional deficiency of AA will lead to the symptoms of scurvy. Therefore, the sensitive quantitative detection of AA is most important in the pharmaceutical analysis, food industry and diagnostic application. In this study, a dual-functional magnetic metal–organic frameworks (Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 @UiO-PBA) nanoparticles was synthesized by modifying phenylboronic acid to the surface of magnetic UiO-66-NH 2 via postsynthetic modification for selectively and sensitively florescent detection of AA. Due to the abundant amino groups and grafted phenylboronic acid, the proposed nanoparticles have the dual properties of hydrophilicity and boronate affinity. Under optimum conditions, the obtained Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 @UiO-PBA nanoparticles can detect AA within 30 s, and has a good linear relationship with the concentration of AA in the range of 5.0–60 μM with a detection limit of 2.5 μM (S/N = 3). In addition, the prepared Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 @UiO-PBA nanoparticles showed excellent selectivity and great potential application in the highly efficient determination of trace AA in vitamin C tablets. These results indicated that a convenient method was proposed to develop fluorescent probes for rapid and sensitive detection of trace AA in real samples.