Ag nanozyme strengthened by folic acid: Superior peroxidase-mimicking activity and application for visual monitoring of dopamine

Dopamine (DA) is an important neurotransmitter; however, any excess or deficiency of DA will cause several diseases in humans. To monitor DA efficiently and conveniently, a Ag nanozyme strengthened by bioactive folic acid (FA@AgNPs) was developed by homogeneous redox assembly. After the microstructure and performance were characterized in detail, it was noted that the proposed FA@AgNPs possessed superior peroxidase-like activity due to the ultra-small Ag nanoparticles and multiple amino, hydroxyl, and aromatic rings in FA. FA@AgNPs accelerated the oxidation of 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) with a low Michaelis constant ( K m ) and high maximal reaction rate ( V max ). Importantly, the characteristic absorbance intensity of FA@AgNPs-TMB-H 2 O 2 at 652 nm ( A 652 ) was exclusively deteriorated in the presence of trace DA, accompanied by a visual color change from blue to colorless. Under the optimized conditions (pH 4.0, 300 μL 1.5 mM TMB, 300 μL 1.0 M H 2 O 2 and incubated for 30 min at room temperature), there expressed an excellent linear relationship between lg A 0 / A 652 and c DA from 1.0 ×10 −8 to 6.67×10 −6 mol/L with a low limit detection of 7.1×10 −10 mol/L (S/N=3). When applied for monitoring of DA in real fruit juice and pharmaceutical samples, the recovery was between 96.6% and 104.9%, with RSD less than 2.2%. The enhanced peroxidase-like activity of the FA@AgNP system and its selective recognition mechanism for DA are also proposed. Graphical abstract