Facile fluorescence detection of malachite green in fish using molecularly imprinted polymers doped CdTe quantum dots based system

Malachite green (MG) possesses high toxicity, therefore, the detection of MG in fish tissues is of vital importance. A novel core–shell MIPs doped CdTe quantum dots coated silica nanoparticles (CdTe-MIP/SiO 2 NPs) were synthesized via a simple one-pot strategy. The materials were characterized carefully. The resulting CdTe-MIP/SiO 2 NPs were coated on the thin layer chromatography plate, and coupled with miniaturized fluorimeter for fluorescence detection of MG in fish samples. The resulting CdTe-MIP/SiO 2 NPs based system possessed good linearity (0.01 ∼ 20 μmol/L), high recoveries (98.36 %∼101.45 %) and low detection limit (3.7 nmol/L) for MG. Furthermore, CdTe-MIP/SiO 2 NPs based system were employed to measure fish samples spiked with MG, meanwhile, HPLC was utilized to evaluate the accuracy and reliability. And the paired t -test was conducted to evaluate differences between fluorescence method and HPLC, P > 0.05 means no significant difference was observed, the results demonstrated that both fluorescence method and HPLC are suitable for MG analysis.