In this paper, we synthesized water‐soluble fluorescent Cu nanoclusters (Cu NCs) through simple reduction reaction with 2‐mercaptobenzimidazole as a protective agent, polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as a stabilizer and ascorbic acid as a reducing agent for the first time. The optical properties and structures of as‐prepared Cu NCs were characterized by fluorescence spectroscopy, UV‐vis, FT‐IR, TEM and XPS. The characterization results showed that the Cu NCs had better fluorescence intensity, high dispersion and large Stokes shift. The Cu NCs had excellent stability against photo‐illumination and ionic strength and displayed an excitation‐independent fluorescence characteristic. The as‐prepared Cu NCs was selectively and sensitively quenched by Hg2+. Furthermore, the fluorescence of Cu NCs was linearly quenched in the range of 2–40 μM (concentration of Hg2+) with a detection limit of 23.0 nM. More importantly, this prepared Cu NCs could be successfully utilized as a probe for detection of Hg2+ in real water samples.

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