Facile polymerizable surfactant inspired synthesis of fluorescent molecularly imprinted composite sensor via aqueous CdTe quantum dots for highly selective detection of λ-cyhalothrin

• A high-performance aqueous QDs-polymer fluorescent imprinted composite sensor (MIPs-OVDAC/CdTe QDs) was prepared.
• The MIPs-OVDAC/CdTe QDs integrated the advantages of the high selectivity of the molecular imprinting and strong fluorescence property of the QDs.
• MIPs-OVDAC/CdTe QDs were successfully applied to selectively and sensitively detect λ-cyhalothrin in real water samples.

In this paper, we develop a method by using octadecyl-4-vinylbenzyl-dimethyl-ammonium chloride (OVDAC) as a surfactant to transfer aqueous CdTe quantum dots (QDs) with excellent fluorescent property to organic solvent, after a surface imprinting-directing polymerization process, a high-performance aqueous QDs-polymer fluorescent imprinted composite sensor was obtained and used for highly selective recognition of λ-cyhalothrin (LC). Here, OVDAC was first used in the fabrication of fluorescent imprinted composite sensors, and the OVDAC-modified CdTe QDs were used as the solid supports and auxiliary monomers. Through this novel strategy, strong fluorescence of aqueous QDs was inherited in the resultant MIPs. After the experimental conditions were optimized, a linear relationship was obtained covering the linear range of 0.1–16 μmol L−1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.9989 and a high imprinting factor about 5.99. In addition, the MIPs-OVDAC/CdTe QDs had higher molecular selectivity and sensing specificity than two kinds of molecularly imprinted silica coated QDs which were prepared by the Stöber method and reverse microemulsion method, respectively. The developed method was applicable to routine trace determination of LC in real examples. This study provides a general strategy to fabricate high-performance fluorescent sensors based on QDs which were originally water-soluble for highly selective detection of environmental pollutants.

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