Luminescence Nanoprobe in the Near-Infrared-II Window for Ultrasensitive Detection of Hypochlorite

Sensitive and selective detection of hypochlorite is in great demand for food safety, especially in fresh cold chain products. However, the detection limit of traditional visible emission-based strategies cannot satisfy the requirement of ultrasensitive analysis in practical applications. In this work, we explored a novel luminescent nanoprobe in the near-infrared-II (NIR-II) window to greatly improve the hypochlorite detection limit for analysis of real milk samples, which was based on the fluorescence resonance energy-transfer process between the hypochlorite-responsive dye (FD1080) and the lanthanide-doped downconverted nanoparticles. Specifically, the NIR-II luminescence from Yb ions was first suppressed by FD1080 due to the energy-transfer mechanism. In the presence of hypochlorite, FD1080 was bleached to recover the luminescence. As a proof-of-concept, the optimal nanoprobe exhibited a linear luminescence recovery in the range of 0.1–1 nM with the detection limit of 0.0295 nM for hypochlorite. Real milk sample detection experiments showed that the probe had good accuracy and precision.