Dual fluorescence resonance energy transfer assay between tunable upconversion nanoparticles and controlled gold nanoparticles for the simultaneous detection of Pb2+ and Hg2+

In this work, we presented a novel dual fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) system for the simultaneous detection of Pb 2+ and Hg 2+ . This system employed two color upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) as the donors, and controlled gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as the acceptors. The two donor–acceptor pairs were fabricated by hybridizing the aptamers and their corresponding complementary DNA. Thus, the green and red upconversion fluorescence could be quenched because of a good overlap between the UCNPs fluorescence emission and the AuNPs absorption spectrum. In the presence of Pb 2+ and Hg 2+ , the aptamers preferred to bind to their corresponding analytes and formed a G-quadruplexes structure for Pb 2+ and the hairpin-like structure for Hg 2+ . As a result, the dual FRET was disrupted, and the green and red upconversion fluorescence was restored. Under optimized experimental conditions, the relative fluorescence intensity increased as the metal ion concentrations were increased, allowing for the quantification of Pb 2+ and Hg 2+ . The relationships between the fluorescence intensity and plotting logarithms of ion concentrations were linear in the range from 0.1 to 100   nM for Pb 2+ and 0.5 to 500   nM for Hg 2+ , and the detection limits of Pb 2+ and Hg 2+ were 50   pM and 150   pM, respectively. As a practical application, the aptasensor was used to monitor Pb 2+ and Hg 2+ levels in naturally contaminated samples and human serum samples. Ultimately, this type of dual FRET could be used to detect other metal ions or contaminants in food safety analysis and environment monitoring.