Facile one-pot synthesis of tannic acid-stabilized fluorescent copper nanoclusters and its application as sensing probes for chlortetracycline based on inner filter effect

In this paper, a simple and one-pot synthetic strategy was established to prepare copper nanoclusters by using tannic acid as the template and ascorbic acid as the reducing agent. The tannic acid-capped copper nanoclusters (Cu [email protected]) displayed excitation and emission peaks around 365 and 435 nm with fluorescence quantum yield of 9.8%. Based on the inner filter effect and static quenching mechanisms, the Cu [email protected] was used to selectively and sensitively determine the chlortetracycline. Under the optimal detection conditions, the excellent linear range of 0.5–200 μM was obtained and the limit of detection (LOD) was gained as 0.084 μM. The satisfactory recoveries of 94.4~103.1% in real bovine serum samples indicated that this platform could be employed in practical test of chlortetracycline.