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 NCs@TA) 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 NCs@TA 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.