A facile method for the sensing of antioxidants based on the redox transformation of polyaniline

• A facile method for the sensing of antioxidants.
• Antioxidants could reduce PANI from EB to LB form.
• The fluorescence of CdTe QDs could be efficiently quenched by PANI.
• PANI quenched CdTe QDs fluorescence could be recovered by antioxidants.

Polyaniline (PANI) is one of the most studied conducting polymers. It could adopt a number of chemical forms depending on the redox states of the assay solution. It was observed that the emeraldine base form of PANI could be reduced by common antioxidants (such as glutathione and ascorbic acid), which resulted in clear changes of the solution color and the UV–vis absorption spectra. In addition, it was observed that the fluorescence of CdTe quantum dots could be efficiently quenched by PANI, and the fluorescence quenching could not take place by the addition of antioxidants. The intensity of the quantum dots fluorescence could be directly related to the amount of antioxidant added to the assay solution, thus a sensitive fluorescent turn-on sensor for antioxidant was established. The detection limits for glutathione and ascorbic acid were estimated to be 50 nM and 100 nM, respectively. Our assay is simple, sensitive, and label-free, we envision it could facilitate the antioxidant sensing related applications.

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