Visual Assay of Glutathione in Vegetables and Fruits Using Quantum Dot Ratiometric Hybrid Probes

Future food safety monitoring with simple, fast, and visual methods has become increasingly important. Accordingly, this work was designed to construct a new-style dual-emission ratiometric fluorescent probe (CdSe@SiO2@CdTe) for visual assay of glutathione (GSH) with a “turn on” strategy. After adding Hg2+, the red fluorescence of the outer CdTe quantum dots (QDs) was quenched through both electron transfer and ion-binding processes. Upon the addition of GSH, the red fluorescence occurred again owing to the strong affinity between GSH and Hg2+, whereas the inner green fluorescence of CdSe QDs was unchanged, leading to a clearly recognizable fluorescence color change (from green to orange–red). In the concentration range from 0.1 to 10 μM, the relative fluorescence intensity ratios (I619/I535) showed an excellent linear correlation with the concentration of GSH, and the detection limit was as low as 42 nM under optimal conditions. Meanwhile, the ratiometric hybrid probes were successfully applied for direct visual sensing GSH in real vegetable and fruit samples.