High Luminescent Carbon Dots Derived from Fermented Beverages for Sensitive Sensing of Tartrazine in Foods

Highly luminescent carbon dots (CDs) derived from fermented beverages-kvass (K-CDs) were synthesized through a one-step hydrothermal method with ethylenediamine (EDA) as a surface passivation reagent. Purified K-CDs with a fluorescent quantum yield of 35.1% were obtained after a dialysis process. The K-CDs were characterized by TEM, FT-IR, XPS, fluorescence and UV-vis spectroscopy. The results indicated that K-CDs possess typical excitation wavelength-dependent blue fluorescence emission, and the strongest excitation and emission wavelengths are 350 nm and 440 nm, respectively. The great spectral overlap between the emission peak (440 nm) of K-CDs and the absorption peak (430 nm) of tartrazine (TAR) leads to an effective fluorescence quenching phenomenon by TAR through inner filter effect (IFE) and the calculated (lg(I0/I)) showed a linear response to TAR concentration in the range of 0.1-70 mu M. The detection limit of the developed method is 23 nM for TAR, and the relative standard deviation (RSD) is 3.9% (c = 10 mu M, n = 7). The fluorescent sensor for TAR based on K-CDs through the IFE mechanism possesses the characteristics of rapid, sensitive, and high selectivity. It has been successfully applied to detect of trace TAR in foods.