Facile, green and clean one-step synthesis of carbon dots from wool: Application as a sensor for glyphosate detection based on the inner filter effect

• Green synthesis of carbon dots from wool.
• The synthetic method was clean and need not any additives, such as acids, bases, salts, or other toxic reagents.
• Detection of glyphosate based on the inner filter effect.
• This sensor exhibited superior accuracy and sensitivity for glyphosate.
• The established method were employed to detect glyphosate in cereal samples.

In this work, we reported a green route for the fabrication of fluorescent carbon dots (CDs). Wool, a kind of nontoxic and natural raw material, was chosen as the precursor to prepare CDs via a one-step microwave-assisted pyrolysis process. Compared with previously reported methods for preparation of CDs based on biomass materials, this method was simple, facile and free of any additives, such as acids, bases, or salts, which avoid the complicated post-treatment process to purify the CDs. The CDs have a high quantum yield (16.3%) and their fluorescence could be quenched by silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) based on inner filter effect (IFE). The presence of glyphosate could induce the aggregation of AgNPs and thus result in the fluorescence recovery of the quenched CDs. Based on this phenomenon, we constructed a fluorescence system (CDs/AgNPs) for determination of glyphosate. Under the optimized conditions, the fluorescence intensity of the CDs/AgNPs system was proportional to the concentration of glyphosate in the range of 0.025–2.5 μg mL−1, with a detection limit of 12 ng mL−1. Furthermore, the established method has been successfully used for glyphosate detection in the cereal samples with satisfactory results.

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