Eco-friendly intracellular microalgae synthesis of fluorescent CdSe QDs as a sensitive nanoprobe for determination of imatinib

Currently, the bio-immobilization methods displayed great potential for the removal and recycle of highly toxic metals depending on their gentle and orderly regulated cellular environment. Herein, we have presented a facile and eco-friendly strategy for bio-immobilizing cadmium (Cd) ions and to harvest CdSe quantum dots (QDs) using microalgae cells as bio-reactors. The production process has good environmental benefits for recycling hazardous Cd metal. The biosynthesized CdSe QDs exhibited superior optical properties, good water-solubility, high crystallinity structure, and were monodispersed sphere nanoparticles with approximate range of 5–6 nm in size, clearly comfirmed by the inversed fluorescent microscope, Ultraviolet-visible, photoluminescence, transmission electron microscopy analyses and so on. Owning to their fluorescence quenching effect, the as-obtained CdSe QDs could be deemed as an effective fluorencent nanoprobe for imatinib detection. The linear range for imatinib was calculated to be from 10.43 μg mL −1 to 417.30 μg mL −1 with a low detection limit of 0.014 μg mL −1 . More strikingly, the possible formation mechanism of CdSe QDs in algal cells was preliminarily speculated that could be related with the intracellular GSH, which could provide new insights for the possibility for environmental transformation of poisonous metals to fluorescent QDs.