A Novel Fluorescent Biosensor for Detection of Silver Ions Based on Upconversion Nanoparticles

In this paper, we report a simple and sensitive fluorescent biosensor for the quantitative analysis of silver ions (Ag⁺) by using NaYF₄:Yb³⁺, Tm³⁺ upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs). Ag⁺ could oxidize o-phenylenediamine (OPD) to the oxidized OPD (oxOPD) directly. The fluorescence of UCNPs can be significantly quenched by oxOPD through inner filter effects (IFE). Under the optimized conditions, the Ag⁺ concentration is proportional to the changes of the fluorescence intensity of UCNPs. The proposed method shows high selectivity and Ag⁺ could be quantitatively detected in the range of 0 to 0.5 mM with a low detection limit of 33 nM for Ag⁺. The selectivity and sensitivity of the detection can also be satisfactory. More importantly, this method has potential in practical application to detect Ag⁺ in real samples without interference.