Novel Glutathione-Capped Cadmium Telluride Quantum Dots-Based Off–On Fluorescence Sensor for Highly Sensitive and Selective Monitoring of Histidine

A novel glutathione-capped cadmium telluride quantum dots-based fluorescence “off–on” sensor was designed and applied for highly sensitive and selective monitoring of histidine in aqueous solution. To provide a platform for histidine detection, manganese ion was first employed as an effective quencher to decrease the fluorescence of glutathione-capped cadmium telluride quantum dots because of the binding of manganese ion to glutathione on the surface of quantum dots and the electron transfer from the photoexcited glutathione-capped cadmium telluride quantum dots to manganese ion. Due to its high binding affinity with manganese ion, histidine can make the manganese ion to be dissociated from the surface of glutathione-capped cadmium telluride quantum dots to form more stable complex with histidine in solution, and set free the luminescent glutathione-capped cadmium telluride quantum dots, thereby recovering the fluorescence of glutathione-capped cadmium telluride quantum dots. Experimental results showed that the recovered fluorescence intensity was directly proportional to the concentration of histidine in the range of 0.006 to 465.0 µg mL−1 with a correlation coefficient (R) of 0.9977, and the detection limit (3σ/K) was 1.82 ng mL−1. Relevant experiments also revealed that the fluorescence sensor gives excellent selectivity for histidine over other common amino acids. To further investigate perfect analysis performance, this sensor was utilized to determine histidine in synthetic samples with satisfactory results.