Synthesis of folic acid-mediated copper nanoclusters for the detection of sulfadiazine sodium

Currently, kinds of metal nanoclusters have been developed to detect various targets owing to their favorable fluorescent property. Herein, copper nanoclusters with blue fluorescence were innovatively prepared, while folic acid served as the template (CuNCs@FA). Simultaneously, CuNCs@FA were identified to be equipped with the functional groups of carboxyl, hydroxyl and amino, providing the possibility of interacting with the potential targets. Further, the current nanoclusters were proved to show the generally satisfactory stability and low-toxicity. Significantly, their fluorescence of CuNCs@FA showed the obvious decrease when sulfadiazine sodium was introduced, and thus we achieved employing CuNCs@FA to detect SD-Na with a linear range of 60 mu M to 6 mM and the detection limit of 50 mu M on the basis of this phenomenon, which may provide a new strategy of assaying SD-Na towards the targets.