One-pot facile synthesis of yellow-green emission carbon dots for rapid and efficient determination of progesterone

Abstract Progesterone (P4) is an important steroid hormone that act as an indicator in the female reproductive processes; thus, following its concentration levels in human serum is important for diagnosis of early pregnancy. In this work, carbon dots (CDs) were designed via a dry-heating method, and the novel CDs exhibited good dispersion stability and excellent photostability. Under optimal conditions, the as-prepared CDs displayed high selectivity and sensitivity for P4 and exhibited a fast-responsive (within 1 min) fluorescence intensity enhancement signal in aqueous solution. For further application, the fluorescence sensing system was further extended to monitoring progesterone in real samples with acceptable recoveries. The methodology developed here offers a promising direction for the detection of clinical biomarkers that are closely related to human health.