Article

pubs.acs.org/JAFC

Green Synthesis of Fluorescent Carbon Dots for Selective Detection

of Tartrazine in Food Samples
Hua Xu, Xiupei Yang,*, Gu Li, Chuan Zhao, and Xiangjun Liao*,

College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, China West Normal University, Nanchong 637000, Peoples Republic of China
Exposure and Biomonitoring Division, Health Canada, 50 Colombine Driveway, Ottawa K1A 0K9, Canada

S Supporting Information
*

ABSTRACT: A simple, economical, and green method for the preparation of water-soluble, high-uorescent carbon quantum
dots (C-dots) has been developed via hydrothermal process using aloe as a carbon source. The synthesized C-dots were
characterized by atomic force microscope (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), uorescence spectrophotometer,
UVvis absorption spectra as well as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The results reveal that the as-prepared Cdots were spherical shape with an average diameter of 5 nm and emit bright yellow photoluminescence (PL) with a quantum
yield of approximately 10.37%. The surface of the C-dots was rich in hydroxyl groups and presented various merits including high
uorescent quantum yield, excellent photostability, low toxicity and satisfactory solubility. Additionally, we found that one of the
widely used synthetic food colorants, tartrazine, could result in a strong uorescence quenching of the C-dots through a static
quenching process. The decrease of uorescence intensity made it possible to determine tartrazine in the linear range extending
from 0.25 to 32.50 M, This observation was further successfully applied for the determination of tartrazine in food samples
collected from local markets, suggesting its great potential toward food routine analysis. Results from our study may shed light on
the production of uorescent and biocompatible nanocarbons due to our simple and environmental benign strategy to synthesize
C-dots in which aloe was used as a carbon source.
KEYWORDS: carbon quantum dots, tartrazine, aloe, uorescence quench

cellular imaging, and biomedicine.14,15 Over the past years,

several methods have been developed for the synthesis of Cdots, including arc discharge,16 laser ablation,17,18 electrochemical oxidation,19 and microwave irradiation.20 However,
hydrothermal carbonization has provided great advancement
over existing physical methods, which is due to its simplicity
and production of C-dots with good quantum yield. Recently,
hydrothermal carbonization of chitosan, orange peels, coee
grounds, and grass has been successfully applied to synthesize
uorescent C-dots, which could be probes for recognizing
various chemical species and cells in vitro and in vivo.2124 All
of these proved that hydrothermal carbonization is an ecofriendly, facile, and classical route for the synthesis of C-dots in
aqueous media. From the point of material preparation, there is
an urgent need to locate new carbon sources for simple,
economical, and green synthesis of C-dots.
In this work, a facile and green method for the preparation of
uorescent C-dots by hydrothermal treatment of aloe and the
application has been proposed. On the basis of uorescence
quenching, the prepared C-dots can serve as an eective sensor
for sensitive and selective determination of tartrazine. The use
of the synthesized C-dots for detection has been validated by
measuring the concentration of tartrazine in food samples
collected from a local supermarket.

INTRODUCTION
Tartrazine is a widely used synthetic food colorant that can be
found in certain food products such as candies, beverages,
bakery products, and dairy products.1,2 However, some studies
have revealed that tartrazine may cause adverse health eects
such as changes in hepatic and renal parameters and
reproductive toxicity, as well as neurobehavioral poisonousness
when it is excessively consumed.3,4 Therefore, the food industry
must strictly control and regulate the content of tartrazine in
foods, which necessitates an interest in the development of an
ecient measurement technique to determine tartrazine in
foods in terms of rapidity, simplicity, and sensitivity.
Until now, various instrumental techniques that analyzed
tartrazine in foodstu products have been increasingly
employed, which include thin-layer chromatography (TLC)
method,5 electrochemical sensor,6 spectrophotometry,7 and
high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).8 Nevertheless, these methods may not be suitable for routine
monitoring because they require sophisticated equipment and
time-consuming sample preparation. As a result, the development of a simple, economical, fast, and reliable assay of
tartrazine has been a challenge for analytical researchers.
Recently, carbon quantum dots (C-dots), which are a new
class of uorescent nanomaterials with a size of <10 nm, have
received much attention owing to their good water solubility,
excellent photostability, low toxicity, and favorable biocompatibility.9,10 The application of C-dots has been explored in
uorescent biosensing and in vivo bioimaging and food
detection together with food-packaging domain.1113 C-Dots
also served as reasonable candidates for future nanodevices,
2015 American Chemical Society

Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
6707

May 8, 2015
July 8, 2015
July 8, 2015
July 8, 2015
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.5b02319
J. Agric. Food Chem. 2015, 63, 67076714

Article

Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Figure 1. AFM images of the C-dots.

of reabsorption within the sample on the observed emission spectrum,

the absorbance values (A) of all solutions in the 10 mm cuvette were
always controlled under 0.1.
Sample Pretreatment. Candy, steamed buns made of corn, and
honey were selected as test samples because tartrazine may be added
as a colorant into them. All samples were obtained from a local
supermarket in Nanchong, China. The candy or honey sample (10.0
g) was crushed and subsequently dissolved in hot water (60 C).
The resulting solution was transferred and diluted to a 50 mL
volumetric ask. The diluted solution was ltered through a 0.45 m
lter membrane for subsequent use. Ten grams of steamed buns and a
certain amount of water were added into a 100 mL beaker, and then
the mixture was blended by electric mixer and extracted with ultrasonic
for 15 min, respectively. After extraction, the mixture was centrifuged
at 12000 rpm for 10 min followed by transferring the supernatant and
diluting to 50 mL. The diluted solution was also ltered through a 0.45
m lter membrane for subsequent use. The above sample
pretreatment method is referenced to the literature with some
minor modications.26
Detection of Tartrazine in Food Samples. The tartrazine
detection procedure was carried out in phosphate buer (PB) (30
mM, pH 6.0) at 5 C. In a typical run, 450 L of C-dots solution was
added into 500 L of PB, followed by the addition of 1000 L of
sample solution and thorough mixing. The resulting mixture was
reconstituted to 4 mL with water. After a reaction time of 5 min at 5
C, the spectra were recorded under excitation at 441 nm with slit
widths setting at 10/10 nm. All of the recoveries were calculated
according to the equation below:

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES

Materials. Aloe was obtained from potted plants in our laboratory

and washed with water for further use. Dichloromethane (CH2Cl2,
99.5%) was purchased from Aladdin Industrial Corp. (Shanghai,
China). Tartrazine (C 16 H 9 N 4 Na 3 O 9 S 2 , 87%), sunset yellow
(C 1 6 H 1 0 N 2 N a 2 O 7 S 2 , 8 5 %) , e r i o g l a u c i n e dis od i u m s al t
(C37H34Na2N2O9S3, 85%), and amaranth (C20H11N2Na3O10S3, 85%)
were received from Aladdin Chemistry Co. Ltd. (Shanghai, China).
Sodium dihydrogen phosphate (NaH2PO4H2O) and disodium
hydrogen phosphate dodecahydrate (Na2HPO412H2O) were obtained from Tianjin Fuchen Chemical Reagents Co., Ltd. (Tianjin,
China). All chemicals were of analytical reagent grade and used
without further purication. The ultrapure water used throughout the
experiments was puried through an UPH-II-20T up water
purication system (Chengdu Ultrapure Technology Co. Ltd.,
Chengdu, China).
Apparatus and Characterization. The AFM analysis was carried
out on a Multimode/Nanoscope (Veeco Corp., USA) on a tapping
mode with a RTESP-Veeco cantilever on a platinum-coated mica
substrate. All absorption spectra were recorded on a Shimadzu UV2550 UVvis absorption spectrophotometer (Kyoto, Japan). Fluorescence measurements were conducted with a Cary Eclipse
uorescence spectrophotometer (Varian, Palo Alto, CA, USA). The
infrared spectra were obtained on a Nicolet 6700 Fourier transform
infrared (FTIR) spectrometer (Thermo Electron Corp., USA) with
passed KBr pellet at room temperature.
Synthesis of Fluorescent C-Dots. The C-dots were prepared by
hydrothermal treatment of fresh aloe in water. In a typical procedure, 5
g of aloe was added into 25 mL of water, and then the mixture was
transferred into a 50 mL Teon-lined autoclave and was heated at 180
C for 11 h. After heating, the autoclaves were allowed to naturally
cool in a fume hood on a heat-resistant plate and the resulting yellow
solution was ltered with a 0.22 m membrane followed by washing
with dichloromethane to remove the unreacted organic moieties.
Finally, the upper light yellow aqueous solution containing C-dots was
collected and stored at 4 C for further characterization and use.
Quantum Yield Measurements. The quantum yield of the assynthesized C-dots was measured on the basis of a procedure
described previously.25 Rhodamine 6G aqueous solution was used as a
reference standard, for which the quantum yield was 0.95 at 488 nm
reported by the literature. Absolute values of the quantum yield were
calculated according to the equation
x = std

recovery = (Cmeasured C initial)/Cadded

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Optimization of the Synthesis Conditions. To ensure
excellent performance of the synthesized C-dots, we have
optimized the time and temperature of the synthesis simply,
and results are shown in Figures S1 and S2. From Figure S1 we
can see clearly that the uorescence intensity gradually
increased with the reaction time up to 11 h but decreased
when the time exceeded 11 h. Therefore, 11 h was chosen as
the optimal reaction time. Simultaneously, as displayed in
Figure S2, the uorescence intensity increased with the reaction
temperature rise. We nally chose 180 C as the optimal
temperature because when the temperature exceeded 180 C,
the uorescence intensity increase was not obvious.
Characterization. Figure 1 shows the typical AFM image of
the as-synthesized C-dots solution. It reveals that the C-dots are
well dispersed in solution with spherical shape and have an
average size of 5 nm approximately. Similarly, Figure S3 shows
the typical TEM image of the C-dots. It can be seen that the C-

2
Ix A std x
2
A x Istd std

where is the quantum yield of the as-prepared C-dots, A is the

absorbance, I is the corrected emission intensity at the excitation
wavelength, and is the refractive index of the solvent. The subscripts
std and x refer to reference standard with known quantum yield
and the C-dots solution, respectively. For the sake of reducing eects
6708

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dots are in the monodispersion state and their size is consistent
with the results of AFM.
The absorption (black line) and emission spectra (green
line) of the as-synthesized C-dots are shown in Figure 2. A peak

Figure 3. Fluorescence emission spectra of C-dots obtained at

dierent excitation wavelengths progressively increasing from 370 to
480 nm in 10 nm increments.

Figure 2. UVvis absorption (black line) and uorescence emission

(green line) spectra of the C-dots. (Inset) Photographic images of Cdots under (a) visible light, (b) ultraviolet light, and (c) ultraviolet
light with tartrazine (22.5 M).

at 278 nm is exhibited in the UVvis absorption spectrum,

which was attributed to n* transition of CO and *
transition of CC.27 The photoluminescent (PL) spectrum
shows an optimal emission peak at about 503 nm when excited
at 441 nm. The inset photograph in Figure 2 indicates the Cdots aqueous solution under visible (a) and UV illumination at
365 nm (b). The bright yellow PL of the C-dots under UV light
is strong enough to be seen with the naked eye, but when
tartrazine was added, the uorescence was obviously quenched
(c). The full width at half-maximum (fwhm) is 100 nm,
suggesting a relatively small size distribution of C-dots, which
was consistent with AFM and TEM data and approximately
equal to that of most reported C-dots.28,29 The strong
uorescence can be caused by the surface energy traps in the
C-dots that become emissive upon stabilization.17
To further investigate the optical properties, the PL emission
spectrum of the C-dots was recorded at progressively increasing
excitation wavelengths (Figure 3). It can be observed that a red
shift was attributed in the emission spectra of C-dots from 443
to 525 nm with increasing excitation wavelengths, accompanied
by a decrease of the uorescence intensity, revealing that the
uorescence of C-dots is strongly dependent on the excitation
wavelength. This nding is substantially in agreement with that
of Vaibhavkumar.30,31 To investigate the components, surface
groups, and structure of the as-synthesized C-dots, EDS and
FT-IR have been carried out. Figure S4 shows the as-prepared
C-dots are mainly composed of C, H, O, and N. As shown in
Figure 4, characteristic absorption bands of the OH stretching
vibration mode at about 3400 and 1073 cm1 could be
observed. The band at 2923 cm1 corresponds to the CH
stretching mode.32 In addition, the peaks appearing at 1590 and
1400 cm1 may be caused by the asymmetric and symmetric
stretching vibration of COO, respectively. These ndings
provide evidence that both the hydroxyl and carboxylic groups
originated from carbohydrates in the aloe.

Figure 4. FT-IR spectrum of C-dots.

It is well-known that the photostability of C-dots plays a key

role in sensitive uorescence detection. In this connection, we
studied the emission behavior of the C-dots under continuous
UV light illumination at 365 nm for 120 min. It was also noted
that as shown in Figure S5 the photobleaching of C-dots is not
observed and the uorescence intensity of C-dots remained
constant even after 120 min of continuous UV light
illumination, indicating the good photostability of C-dots.
Using rhodamine 6G as a reference, a PL quantum yield (QY)
of 10.37% was measured. Table S1 shows the comparison of
the optical properties and applications of the C-dots derived
from aloe with the reported methods. It can be seen that the
present method is green and simple and has a relatively high
quantum yield. At the same time, it is worth mentioning that
the as-prepared C-dots emit strong yellow uorescence,
whereas most reported carbon dots are blue, and they can be
a sensitive uorescent probe for colorant detention.
Design Principle of the Sensor. Under the same
experimental conditions, the uorescence spectra of the Cdots alone and the system of C-dots with tartrazine were
recorded, respectively. As shown in Figure S6, the C-dots
presented strong uorescence at 503 nm when excited at 441
6709

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.5b02319
J. Agric. Food Chem. 2015, 63, 67076714

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Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Scheme 1. Scheme of the Synthetic Strategy for C-Dots and the Principle of Tartrazine Sensing

nm. Upon the addition of tartrazine, the uorescence intensity

of the prepared C-dots decreased signicantly. On the basis of
the uorescence quenching, we speculated that a facile
uorescence sensor for the determination of tartrazine could
be constructed. The synthetic strategy for C-dots and the
principle of tartrazine sensing are schematically presented in
Scheme 1.
Mechanism of Fluorescence Quenching. Broadly speaking, various kinds of molecular interactions with the quencher
molecule can reduce the uorescence quantum yield, such as
electron or energy transfer, collisional quenching, excited-state
reaction, and ground-state complex formation The quenching
mechanisms are usually divided into dynamic quenching, which
results from collision, and static quenching, resulting from the
formation of a ground-state complex between the uorescence
material and quencher. On the other hand, they could be
distinguished by some additional formations such as the
relationship between the quenching and viscosity, temperature,
and lifetime measurements. 33 In general, the dynamic
uorescence quenching constants will increase with the rise
of the system temperature due to the energy transfer eciency,
and the eective collision times between molecules will also
increase. On the contrary, the values of the static uorescence
quenching constants will decrease with the rise of temperature.
Let us suppose that the mechanism is dynamic quenching; it
can be described by the SternVolmer equation34

Figure 5. SternVolmer plots for the system of C-dotstartrazine

under temperatures of 278, 288, 298, and 308 K, respectively. F0 and F
are the uorescence intensity of C-dots in the absence and presence of
tartrazine, respectively. Conditions: C-dots, 450 L; PB, 30 mM, pH
6.0.

Table 1. SternVolmer Quenching Constants for the

Interaction of C-Dots and Tartrazine at Dierent
Temperatures

F0/F = 1 + KSV[Q] = 1 + Kq0[Q]

pH

where F0 and F are the C-dots uorescence intensities at 503

nm in the absence and presence of tartrazine, respectively; KSV
and Kq are the SternVolmer quenching constant and the
bimolecular quenching constant, respectively; [Q] is the
concentration of tartrazine; and 0 is the average lifetime of
the C-dots without any other uorescence quencher, with a
general value of 108 s. Figure 5 shows the uorescence
intensities of the C-dots analyzed by plotting F0/F versus [Q]
at 278, 288, 298, and 308 K. Table 1 summarizes the calculated
KSV and Kq values for each temperature. As shown, the KSV is
inversely correlated with temperature, and the value of Kq is far
larger than 2.0 1010 L mol1 s1, which is the maximum
scatter collision quenching constant. These ndings indicate
that the quenching process may be caused by static quenching.
Additionally, the UVvis spectra of the prepared C-dots alone
and the system of the C-dots with tartrazine are illustrated in
Figure S7. As can be seen from this gure, with the addition of
tartrazine, the absorbance intensity of the C-dots at 280 nm
increases, with a blue shift. This observation indicates that the
formation of ground-state complexes is generated due to the
interaction between tartrazine and C-dots.
Optimization of Experimental Conditions. With the
purpose of investigating the sensitivity, precision, and selectivity
of the analytical method, parameters including the medium pH,

6.0
6.0
6.0
6.0

T (K)
278
288
298
308

KSV (L mol1)
5.663
5.213
5.178
4.734

10
104
104
104

Kq (L mol1 s1)

SD

0.9984
0.9960
0.9967
0.9939

0.0278
0.0402
0.0361
0.0452

5.663
5.213
5.178
4.734

12

10
1012
1012
1012

dosage of C-dots, reaction temperature, and incubation time

were systematically optimized for the system.
The eect of the solution pH on the uorescence quenching
of C-dots in the presence of tartrazine is shown in Figure 6a. An
increase in pH from 4.0 to 6.0 results in the increased
uorescence quenching eciency (represented as F0/F, where
F0 and F are the uorescence intensities of the C-dots at 503
nm before and after the addition of tartrazine, respectively.)
whereas a further increase in pH from 6 to 7.5 leads to a
gradual decrease. Such an observation suggests that the
uorescence intensity of the C-dots strongly depends on the
pH value of the system. Our results are consistent with those of
C-dots functioned with hydroxyl and carboxylic/carbonyl
moieties.10,19,32 Consequently, we selected 6.0 as the optimal
pH for our study.
The eect of the dosage of C-dots on the uorescence
quenching eciency is presented in Figure 6b. The
uorescence quenching eciency gradually increased with the
dosage of C-dots up to 450 L. When the dosage of C-dots
6710

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.5b02319
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Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Figure 6. Eect of (a) pH of buer solution, (b) dosage of C-dots, (c) reaction temperature, and (d) reaction time on uorescence quenching
eciency of the C-dotstartrazine system. F0 and F are the uorescence intensity of C-dots in the absence and presence of tartrazine, respectively.
Conditions: PB, 30 mM; tartrazine, 10 M.

exceeded 450 L, the uorescence quenching eciency

decreased. Therefore, 450 L was used as the optimal dosage
for further performance
Figure 6c shows the uorescence curves of the system at
dierent temperatures. As the temperature increased from 5 to
35 C, the uorescence quenching eciency decreased
gradually. Among the temperatures studied, the maximum
uorescence intensity eciency was achived at 5 C. Hence, 5
C is selected as the optimum reaction temperature.
The eect of incubation time on the uorescence intensity of
the system is shown in Figure 6d. No signicant changes in F0/
F were observed after an incubation time of 1 min. To ensure
the consistency of the whole experiment, it is important to
record the stable uorescence signal. Thus, 5 min is
conservatively chosen as the optimum incubation time.
Analytical Performance for Tartrazine Sensing.
Sensitivity. The dependence of F0/F on the dierent
concentrations of tartrazine under the identical conditions is
shown in Figure 7. As displayed, the uorescence quenching
eciency of C-dots gradually decreases with an increase in the
concentration of tartrazine. As shown in the upper right inset of
Figure 7, the decrease in uorescence quenching eciency

exhibited a linear response to the tartrazine concentration in

the range of 0.2532.50 M, which was consistent with the
photograph of the solutions under UV light. The calibration
curve can be depicted as F0/F = 0.9604 + 0.0577X (X is the
concentration of tartrazine, M) with a correlation coecient
of 0.9986. The relative standard deviation (RSD) was 0.25%
through ve parallel determinations (n = 5) at a xed tartrazine
concentration of 10.00 M, indicating the excellent reliability of
this sensor. The detection limit is estimated to be 73 nM at a
signal-to-noise ratio of 3.
In Table 2, we compare the experimental results with those
for reported methods of tartrazine detection. As shown in Table
2, our developed assay exhibits a wider linear range and lower
RSD compared to some methods. Our method can be an
alternative to others for the determination of tartrazine in
samples, although the limit of detection (LOD) our method is
not the smallest in Table 2. It is worth mentioning that almost
all of the reported sensors need special equipment, a
sophisticated technique, or complicated operations. By contrast,
the sensor we developed here has its own features, including
low instrumentation cost, simplicity of operation, and fast
6711

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Figure 7. Fluorescence emission spectra of C-dots in the presence of

dierent concentrations of tartrazine in 30 mM PB (pH 6.0). From a
to l: 0.00, 0.25, 0.75, 2.50, 3.75, 5.00, 7.50, 12.50, 17.50, 22.50, 27.50,
32.50 M, respectively. C-dots, 450 L. (Inset) Photographic images
of the corresponding solutions under UV light and the relationship
curve between F0/F and concentration of tartrazine.

Figure 8. Eects of potentially interfering substances: (0) noninterference; (1) glucose, 500 M; (2) lactose, 500 M; (3) starch,
500 M; (4) citric acid, 500 M; (5) tartaric acid, 500 M; (6)
ascorbic acid, 500 M; (7) glutamic acid, 250 M; (8) phenylalmine,
250 M; (9) NO2, 500 M; (10) HCO3, 500 M; (11) Ca2+, 500
M; (12) Zn2+, 500 M; (13) K+, 500 M; (14) Fe3+, 25 M; (15)
sunset yellow, 5.0 M; (16) erioglaucine disodium salt, 25 M; (17)
amaranth, 5.0 M. Conditions: C-dots, 450 L; PB, 30 mM, pH 6.0;
tartrazine, 5.0 M.

response, which makes it more applicable for routine analysis of

tartrazine in foods.
Selectivity. To evaluate the selectivity of this sensing system,
we examined the uorescence response of the system to
tartrazine at a concentration of 5.0 M with the presence of
coexisting foreign substances such as K+, Ca2+, Zn2+, Fe3+,
HCO3, NO2, glutamic acid, glutathione (GSH), citric acid,
phenylalanine, starch, tartaric acid, vitamin C, glucose, lactose,
sunset yellow, erioglaucine disodium salt, and amaranth under
the same conditions. As shown in Figure 8, for the present
study, various dierent substances were added in the test
solution at the amount of 100 times tartrazine initially, and the
ratio would be gradually reduced when the interference
presented. It was found that some of the materials, such as
Fe3+, sunset yellow, erioglaucine disodium salt, and amaranth,
could be only allowed at relatively lower levels. Nevertheless,
the concentrations of these substances were much lower than
the allowed levels in food samples. Meanwhile, most of the
common excipients in foods could be tolerated at high

concentrations up to 100 times. That is to say the established

strategy possesses a high selectivity toward tartrazine detection.
Application in Food Samples. The developed approach was
employed to detect the trace level of tartrazine in some food
samples. The results for the pretreated food samples spiked
with known amounts of standard tartrazine are shown in Table
3. The intraday and interday recoveries ranged from 88.6 to
103.4% and from 87.3 to 106.6%, respectively. All of these
results indicate that the accuracy and reliability of the proposed
method can be applied to the determination of tartrazine in
food samples.
In summary, C-dots based on aloe were synthesized via a
simple and green method. Without further chemical
modication, the synthesized C-dots have been applied to the
sensitive and selective detection of tartrazine in some food
samples. The new C-dots described here may extend their great
potential for cell imaging and drug delivery applications due to

Table 2. Comparison of the Proposed Method with Other Methods for Determination of Tartrazine
method

linear range (M)

R2

LOD (nM)

RSD%

ref

graphene and mesoporous TiO2 electrochemical sensor

spectrophotometry method
electrochemical detection
electrochemical detection
electrochemical sensor
high-performance liquid chromatography
alumina microbers-based electrochemical sensor
gold nanoparticles carbon paste electrode
dierential pulse polarography
multiwalled carbon nanotubes lm-modied electrode
solid phase spectrophotometry
capillary zone electrophoresis
thin-layer chromatography
reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography
uorescence analysis

0.021.18
0.001310.67
0.1156
0.0520
0.009360.37
0.09349.34
0.0050.14
0.051.6
0.1919
0.3774.8
0.0941.22
5.6178
74.9356
0.01139.3
0.2532.5

0.994
0.992

8
0.56
56
14.3
2.8
18.5
2.0
2
30
187

2.70
0.98
3.12

26
23
17
18
22
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
5
42
this work

6712

0.994
0.999
0.998
0.997
0.999
0.990
0.998
0.995
0.992
0.999
0.998

4.3
4.3
4.7
1.1
5.2
4.00

2430
0.03
3.5
73

0.25

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Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Table 3. Recovery Test and Precision of the Analysis of Tartrazine in Food Samples
intraday
food sample

detected (M)
b

interday

spiked (M)

founda (M)

recovery (%)

RSD (%)

founda (M)

recovery (%)

RSD (%)

1.00
5.00
7.00

1.00 0.07
4.96 0.07
7.00 0.05

99.9
99.2
100.0

2.8
0.6
0.3

1.06 0.09
4.99 0.07
7.02 0.13

106.6
99.8
100.3

4.2
0.6
0.7

steamed buns

ND

honey

ND

1.00
5.00
7.00

1.04 0.11
4.96 0.03
7.04 0.10

103.4
99.1
100.6

3.9
0.2
0.7

1.05 0.15
5.00 0.07
7.00 0.18

105.4
99.9
100.0

5.8
0.6
1.0

candy

4.80

3.00
5.00
7.00

7.48 0.15
9.44 0.06
11.12 0.12

88.6
92.3
90.0

0.8
0.2
0.5

7.44 0.08
9.51 0.12
11.16 0.10

87.3
93.6
90.4

0.4
0.5
0.4

Value = mean SD (n = 5). bNot detectable.

simultaneous determination of sunset yellow and tartrazine. Electrochim. Acta 2012, 74, 151157.
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the simplicity of their synthesis procedure and the use of

aordable and environmentally friendly aloe as carbon source.

ASSOCIATED CONTENT

S Supporting Information
*

Experimental procedures for EDS, supplementary gures of

EDS, uorescence spectra, and absorbance spectra of the Cdots and the system of C-dotstartrazine. The Supporting
Information is available free of charge on the ACS Publications
website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.5b02319.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Authors

*(X.Y.) Phone/fax: +86-817-2568081. E-mail: xiupeiyang@

163.com.
*(X.L.) Phone/fax: (613) 415-2098. E-mail: xiangjun.liao@
mail.mcgill.ca.
Funding

We thank the Natural Science Foundation of China

(21277109) and the Program for Young Scientic and
Technological Innovative Research Team in Sichuan Province
(2014TD0020) for research grants.
Notes

The authors declare no competing nancial interest.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Prof. Martin M. F. Choi of the Department of
Chemistry, Hong Kong Baptist University, for valuable
suggestions and uorescence spectra study.

ABBREVIATIONS USED
C-dots, carbon quantum dots; TEM, transmission electron
microscopy; AFM, atomic force microscope; FTIR, Fourier
transform infrared spectroscopy; EDS, energy dispersive
spectrometry; TLC, thin-layer chromatography; HPLC, high
performance liquid chromatograph; fwhm, full width at halfmaximum; PB, phosphate buer; PL, photoluminescent; QY,
quantum yield; LOD, limit of detection; RSD, relative standard
deviation; GSH, glutathione

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