Galli Gigerii Endothelium Corneum derived fluorescent carbon dots and their application as sensing platform for nitroimidazoles and cell imaging

The reuse of waste from agriculture or food is of great significance. Herein, an efficient and green approach for the synthesis of N-CDs with GGEC, a waste from chicken, as precursor was reported for the first time. The obtained N-CDs with outstanding blue fluorescence demonstrated high quantum yield (QY) of 19.45%. Further, the optical and physicochemical properties of N-CDs were characterized through UV–vis, FL spectroscopy, TEM, FT-IR and XPS. Interestingly, the N-CDs can be acted as a sensitive and selective sensing platform for nitroimidazoles including MNZ, TNZ, ONZ and SNZ with the fluorescent quenching mechanisms of IFE and static quenching. The LODs of them were separately determined as 0.267 μM, 0.067 μM, 0.133 μM, 0.067 μM, which were satisfying in comparison with the reported fluorescence detection method. Furthermore, the N-CDs were also successfully applied to the detection of nitroimidazoles in the real samples (e.g. tablets, chicken and plasma) with satisfactory results. Eventually, the cytotoxicity and bio-imaging applications of N-CDs were conducted and the results confirmed the potential application of it in biological field.