Selective recognition histidine and tryptophan by enhanced chemiluminescence ZnSe quantum dots

In the present study, the light emitted from ZnSe quantum dots (QDs)–H2O2 reaction was applied as a novel chemiluminescence (CL) probe for effective quantitative determination of histidine and tryptophan. Catalytic feature of amino acids causes a significant enhancement in the light emission produced by the reaction of quantum dots (QDs) with hydrogen peroxide. Under the optimum conditions, this method has a satisfactorily linear range of 0.5–50 μM and 1.5–25 μM for histidine and tryptophan, respectively. The effect of various parameters such as concentration of ZnSe QDs, concentration of H2O2 and concentration of imidazole on the intensity of CL system was studied. The main experimental advantage of the proposed method was its high selectivity behavior for these two amino acids compared with other amino acids and essential metal ions. The detection system was successfully applied for the determination of histidine and tryptophan in human serum samples with remarkable results.