Green florescent carbon dots synthesized from various household green wastes for detection of parathion methyl pesticide

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to examine the use of green household wastes, such as lemon peel, bottle gourd peel (BG), culinary banana peel, and sugarcane bagasse, as a source for synthesizing carbon dots (C-dots) and to determine how the composition of the material affected the functional characteristics of the C-dots and its interaction behaviour for detection of pesticide. The synthesized C-dots showed green fluorescence with varying particle sizes and red shifting fluorescence with more than 100 nm Stokes shift, indicating time and excitation dependent luminescence behaviour. C-dots produced from bottle gourd (BG) peel had a positive impact on the functional characteristics with a maximum emission of 514 nm and excitation of 410 nm. The SAED and TEM pattern confirmed its amorphous structure. The hydronium ion diameter and the quantum yield were 0.99 nm and 3.1 % respectively. Contributing towards food safety, the synthesized C-dots from BG showed significant behaviour in the detection of parathion methyl (MP) like organophosphorus pesticide (OP) as it conjugated with iron and 1 ppm of parathion methyl, which exhibited “Turn-Off-On” fluorescence behaviour with noticeable changed in intensity and act as a promising qualitative tool for detection of parathion methyl in real sample. The intensity of FL and concentration of OP is directly proportional which is established by the investigated OP in vegetable, fruit and water samples. The significance of iron and MP-OP was also investigated in the presence of other metal ions and pesticides and showed that the C-dots synthesized probe solution was reliable and sensitive towards the detection of MP-OP in real samples.