Abstract
Copper nanoclusters (CuNCs) are an attractive alternative to other metal nanoclusters. The synthesis of CuNCs is highly efficient and fast, with low-cost and without any complicated manipulation. Because of their tunable fluorescence and low toxicity, CuNCs have been highly exploited for biochemical sensing. This review (with 172 refs.) summarizes the progress that has been made in the field in the past years. Following an introduction into the fundamentals of CuNCs, the review first focuses on synthetic methods and the fluorescence properties of CuNCs (with subsections on the use of proteins, peptides, DNA and other molecules as templates). This is followed by a section on the use of CuNCs in fluorometric assays, with subsections on the detection of small molecules, proteins, nucleic acids, various other biomolecules including drugs, and of pH values. A further large chapter summarizes the work related to environmental analyses, specifically on determination of metal ions, anions and pollutants.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21777135 and 51708475), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province, China (2019JJ50596, 2019JJ40283, and 2018JJ3496), the Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hunan Province (18C0102), and Hunan 2011 Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Engineering & Technology with Environmental Benignity and Effective Resource Utilization.
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Qing, T., Zhang, K., Qing, Z. et al. Recent progress in copper nanocluster-based fluorescent probing: a review. Microchim Acta 186, 670 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-019-3747-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-019-3747-4