Turn on fluorescence detection of curcumin in food matrices by the novel fluorescence sensitizer

In this study, silane reagents were for the first time explored as the fluorescence sensitizer. They were demonstrated to have fluorescence sensitization effect on curcumin and 3-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GPTMS) possessed the strongest effect. Thus, GPTMS was adopted as the novel fluorescence sensitizer to turn on the fluorescence of curcumin by more than two orders of magnitude for detection. In this way, curcumin could be determined with a linear range of 0.2–2000 ng/mL and an LOD of 0.067 ng/mL. The method was applicable to determine curcumin in several actual food samples, which had the good consistency with the high performance liquid chromatographic method, demonstrating the high accuracy of the proposed method. In addition, the curcumins sensitized by GPTMS could be cured under certain conditions and held the potential for solid fluorescence application. This study expanded the scope of fluorescence sensitizer to silane reagents, and provided the novel approach for fluorescence detection of curcumin and further to generate new solid fluorescence system.