Highly sensitive visual fluorescence sensor for aminoglycoside antibiotics in food samples based on mercaptosuccinic acid-CdTe quantum dots

The inappropriate application of aminoglycoside antibiotics (AGs) in food products has led to the accumulation of AG residues in the human body. In this study, a novel fluorescent sensor based on mercaptosuccinic acid (MSA)-modified CdTe quantum dots (QDs) were designed for the rapid visual detection of a representative AG, neomycin (NEO). The proposed sensor showed excellent performance toward NEO determination, with a detection limit of 1.60 × 10 −8  mol/L. Furthermore, MSA-CdTe QDs can be applied to the visual detection of NEO, where the fluorescence changes from bright yellow to dark red with increasing NEO concentration. Most importantly, high selectivity of MSA-CdTe QDs toward NEO was achieved even in the presence of other antibiotics, which are common interfering agents, with a recovery rate in actual samples as high as 95.66 %-100.77 % and an RSD of less than 3.15 %.