A simple, fast and low-cost turn-on fluorescence method for dopamine detection using in situ reaction

•A turn-on fluorescence technique is developed for dopamine detection by using one-step selective reaction between resorcinol and dopamine.•The limit of detection is 1.8 nM (S/N = 3).•This detection could be completed within 5 min.•The method has been demonstrated to successfully detect dopamine in human urine samples with high recovery ratio of 97.84%-103.50%.

A simple, fast and low-cost method for dopamine (DA) detection based on turn-on fluorescence using resorcinol is developed. The rapid reaction between resorcinol and DA allows the detection to be performed within 5 min, and the reaction product (azamonardine) with high quantum yield generates strong fluorescence signal for sensitive optical detection. The detection exhibits a high sensitivity to DA with a wide linear range of 10 nM-20 μM and the limit of detection is estimated to be 1.8 nM (S/N = 3). This approach has been successfully applied to determine DA concentrations in human urine samples with satisfactory quantitative recovery of 97.84%-103.50%, which shows great potential in clinical diagnosis.

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