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.