Smartphone-Assisted and Optical Quantification of Copper and Glucose Using Palm Wine-Tailored Carbon Dots and Their Multiple Logic Gate Application

Abstract

In this work, potassium, sulfur, nitrogen, and chlorine self-doped carbon dots (CDs) were hydrothermally synthesized using palm wine as a carbon source. The palm wine-derived CDs (PW-CDs) are amorphous in nature and displayed an average particle size of 4.19 ± 0.89 nm. The as-synthesized CDs are used to fabricate a photoluminescent sensing probe to simultaneously detect Cu 2+ and glucose via the "Turn ON−OFF−ON" mechanism. The PL quenching mechanism of PW-CDs enables the selective and sensitive detection of Cu 2+ ions with a detection limit (LOD) of 0.8 ppb (4.7 nM). The sensing probe quantified Cu 2+ in tap water, drinking water, and e-waste samples to prove its viability. Using CDs to quantify copper in e-waste leachate samples is a novel approach as no prior instances of such application have been reported. The system's performance is considered to be highly reproducible due to the relative standard deviation being <6.64%, along with excellent recoveries within the range of 93.24−109.86%. The quenched PL can be recovered by introducing glucose into the PW-CD + Cu 2+ system; this strategy is employed to quantify glucose with a LOD of 0.11 ppm (0.61 μM). The feasibility of this sensor was confirmed by the determination of glucose in actual human plasma specimens of diabetic patients. It is to be noted that these samples were neither diluted nor spiked with glucose. The developed PW-CD + Cu 2+ sensing system yields satisfactory recoveries of 93.45−107.37%. This probe was also incorporated into a smartphone-based sensing platform to detect Cu 2+ and glucose with desirable recoveries. The proposed smartphone-based sensing platform is flexible, reliable, and accurate, making it suitable for resource-constrained areas. Furthermore, based on the effect of Cu 2+ ions and glucose on the PL response and absorbance spectra of PW-CDs, four logic gates (YES, IMPLICATION, NOT, and OR) were designed, and PW-CDs were also used for cell imaging applications.