Quantum dots and p-phenylenediamine based method for the sensitive determination of glucose

By introducing p-phenylenediamine (PPD) to the hybrid system of Mn-doped CdS/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) and glucose oxidase (GOD), a sensitive label-free method was proposed for direct detection of glucose. With glucose and PPD as substrates, 2,5-diamino-N,N′-di-(4-aminophenyl)-2,5-cyclohexadiene-1,4-diimine (DDACD) that intensively quenches the fluorescence of QDs can be produced by the catalysis of GOD. A detection limit as low as 3.2 μM was obtained with the high-efficient fluorescence quencher. Two linear ranges, from 5.0 μM to 1000 μM and from 1.0 mM to 10.0 mM, were identified between time-gated fluorescence intensity and the concentration of glucose. It is shown that the newly proposed methods have high selectivity for glucose over other saccharides and coexisting biological species in serum. The method can be used directly to determine glucose in normal adult human serum without any complicated sample pretreatments. The recovery rate and repeatability of the method were also shown to be satisfactory.