Development of a nano plastic antibody for determination of propranolol using CdTe quantum dots

[Display omitted] •A new optical sensor is developed to measure trace amount of propranolol.•The method is based on thioglycolic acid capped CdTe quantum dot.•The selectivity was improved using molecularly imprinted polymer-CdTe QDs.•Fluorescence quenching upon aggregation was accrued with increasing prilocaine.•Propranolol can be measure from 3.0 to 139.0M with a detection limit of 0.7M. In this work, a nano plastic antibody has been developed for the determination of an important drug, propranolol. For this purpose, water-soluble thioglycolic acid stabilized CdTe QDs (TGA-stabilized CdTe QDs), as a support for the plastic antibody, was synthesis via a refluxing method. Following, reverse micro emulsion technique was applied to stabilize a thin silica shell on the surface of the QDs. In the next step, molecularly imprinted polymer embedded CdTe QDs were obtained using 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane (as a monomer) and tetraethoxysilane (as a crosslinker) in the present of propranolol. Finally, the obtained nano plastic antibody was used for propranolol sensing. At the optimized conditions, a linear dynamic range was obtained from 3.0 to 139μmolL−1 propranolol with a detection limit as 0.7μmolL−1. The precision of the method for 30.0 and 70.0μmolL−1 propranolol was obtained as 6.5% and 4.8% (3 replicate detections), respectively. The proposed method is simple, selective, and cost-efficient for propranolol measurement.