Gold nanoclusters as switch-off fluorescent probe for detection of uric acid based on the inner filter effect of hydrogen peroxide-mediated enlargement of gold nanoparticles

Herein we report a novel switch-off fluorescent probe for highly selective determination of uric acid (UA) based on the inner filter effect (IFE), by using poly-(vinylpyrrolidone)-protected gold nanoparticles (PVP-AuNPs) and chondroitin sulfate-stabilized gold nanoclusters (CS-AuNCs) as the IFE absorber/fluorophore pair. In this IFE-based fluorometric assay, the newly designed CS-AuNCs were explored as an original fluorophore and the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) -driven formed PVP-AuNPs can be a powerful absorber to influence the excitation of the fluorophore, due to the complementary overlap between the absorption band of PVP-AuNPs and the emission band of CS-AuNCs. Under the optimized conditions, the extent of the signal quenching depends linearly on the H2O2 concentration in the range of 1-100 μM (R2 =0.995) with a detection limit down to 0.3 μM. Based on the H2O2-dependent fluorescence IFE principle, we further developed a new assay strategy to enable selective sensing of UA by using a specific uricase-catalyzed UA oxidation as the in situ H2O2 generator. The proposed uricase-linked IFE-based assay exhibited excellent analytical performance for measuring UA over the concentration ranging from 5 to 100 μM (R2=0.991), and can be successfully applied to detection of UA as low as 1.7 μM (3σ) in diluted human serum samples.