Selective Detection of Alkaline Phosphatase Activity in Environmental Water Samples by Copper Nanoclusters Doped Lanthanide Coordination Polymer Nanocomposites as the Ratiometric Fluorescent Probe

Abstract

In this paper, a novel, accurate, sensitive and rapid ratiometric fluorescent sensor was fabricated using a copper nanoclusters@infinite coordination polymer (ICP), specifically, terbium ion-guanosine 5’-disodium (Cu NCs@Tb-GMP) nanocomposites as the ratiometric fluorescent probe, to detect alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in water. The fluorescence probe was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectrosco-py, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The experimental results showed that, compared with Tb-GMP fluorescent sensors, Cu ratiometric fluorescent sensors based on NCs encapsulated in Tb-GMP had fewer experimental errors and fewer false-positive signals and were more condu-cive to the sensitive and accurate detection of ALP. In addition, the developed fluorescent probe had good fluorescence intensity, selectivity, repeatability and stability. Under optimized condi-tions, the ratiometric fluorescent sensor detected ALP in the range of 0.002–2 U mL−1 (R2 = 0.9950) with a limit of detection of 0.002 U mL−1, and the recovery of ALP from water samples was less than 108.2%. These satisfying results proved that the ratiometric fluorescent probe has good application prospects and provides a new method for the detection of ALP in real water samples.