A novel terbium composite nanoparticles: Preparation and selective fluorescence determination of chromium(VI)

A highly efficient ultrasonic-assisted method was successfully applied to prepare the strong fluorescence Tb/acetyl acetone (acac)/poly (2-Acrylamidoglycolic acid monohydrate) (PAAM) composite nanoparticles. Based on the fluorescence quenching of Tb/acac/PAAM by Cr(VI), an assay for the selective determination of Cr(VI), without separation of Cr(III), was developed. It is characteristic of very few interferences, stable fluorescence signals (at least 2 h), simple instrument (common spectrofluorometer) and simple step. Under optimal experimental conditions, the fluorescence intensity of the system is linearly proportional to the concentration of Cr(VI) in concentration range of 5–800 ng mL−1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.9983. The limit of detection was found to be 0.5 ng mL−1.The proposed method has been applied to the selective quantification of Cr(VI) in synthetic samples with satisfactory results.