Carbon dots based fluorescent sensor for sensitive determination of hydroquinone

In this paper, a novel biosensor based on Carbon dots (C-dots) for sensitive detection of hydroquinone (H 2 Q) is reported. It is interesting to find that the fluorescence of the C-dots could be quenched by H 2 Q directly. The possible quenching mechanism is proposed, which shows that the quenching effect may be caused by the electron transfer from C-dots to oxidized H 2 Q-quinone. Based on the above principle, a novel C-dots based fluorescent probe has been successfully applied to detect H 2 Q. Under the optimal condition, detection limit down to 0.1   μM is obtained, which is far below U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated wastewater discharge limit of 0.5   mg/L. Moreover, the proposed method shows high selectivity for H 2 Q over a number of potential interfering species. Finally, several water samples spiked with H 2 Q are analyzed utilizing the sensing method with satisfactory recovery. The proposed method is simple with high sensitivity and excellent selectivity, which provides a new approach for the detection of various analytes that can be transformed into quinone .