Chiral recognition of phenylglycinol enantiomers based on N-acetyl-l-cysteine capped CdTe quantum dots in the presence of Ag+

In this study, a novel method for chiral recognition of phenylglycinol (PG) enantiomers was proposed. Firstly, water-soluble N -acetyl- l -cysteine (NALC)-capped CdTe quantum dots (QDs) were synthesized and experiment showed that the fluorescence intensity of the reaction system slightly enhancement when added PG enantiomers to NALC-capped CdTe quantum dots (QDs), but the R-PG and S-PG could not be distinguished. Secondly, when there was Ag + presence in the reaction system, the experiment result was extremely interesting, the PG enantiomers cloud make NALC-capped CdTe QDs produce different fluorescence signal, in which the fluorescence of S-PG   +   Ag +   +   NALC-CdTe system was significantly enhanced, and the fluorescence of R-PG   +   Ag +   +   NALC-CdTe system was markedly decreased. Thirdly, all the enhanced and decreased of the fluorescence intensity were directly proportional to the concentration of R-PG and S-PG in the linearly range 10 −   5 –10 −   7   mol·L −   1 , respectively. So, the new method for simultaneous determination of the PG enantiomers was built too. The experiment result of the method was satisfactory with the detection limit of PG can reached 10 −   7   mol·L −   1 and the related coefficient of S-PG and R-PG are 0.995 and 0.980, respectively. The method was highly sensitive, selective and had wider detection range compared with other methods.