Development of a nano plastic antibody for determination of propranolol using CdTe quantum dots

•A new optical sensor is developed to measure trace amount of propranolol.•The method is based on thioglycolic acid capped CdTe quantum dot.•The selectivity was improved using molecularly imprinted polymer-CdTe QDs.•Fluorescence quenching upon aggregation was accrued with increasing prilocaine.•Propranolol can be measure from 3.0 to 139.0 M with a detection limit of 0.7 M.

In this work, a nano plastic antibody has been developed for the determination of an important drug, propranolol. For this purpose, water-soluble thioglycolic acid stabilized CdTe QDs (TGA-stabilized CdTe QDs), as a support for the plastic antibody, was synthesis via a refluxing method. Following, reverse micro emulsion technique was applied to stabilize a thin silica shell on the surface of the QDs. In the next step, molecularly imprinted polymer embedded CdTe QDs were obtained using 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane (as a monomer) and tetraethoxysilane (as a crosslinker) in the present of propranolol. Finally, the obtained nano plastic antibody was used for propranolol sensing. At the optimized conditions, a linear dynamic range was obtained from 3.0 to 139 μmol L−1 propranolol with a detection limit as 0.7 μmol L−1. The precision of the method for 30.0 and 70.0 μmol L−1 propranolol was obtained as 6.5% and 4.8% (3 replicate detections), respectively. The proposed method is simple, selective, and cost-efficient for propranolol measurement.

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