Abstract
We report a highly cost effective, simple to use, environment friendly and highly sensitive assay for detection of melamine with L-ascorbic acid stabilized copper nanoclusters (CUNCs). Melamine, a well-known nitrogen rich compound, commonly used as adulterant in milk, has a positive charge and interacts with the highly fluorescent CUNCs through hydrogen bonding, which causes the aggregation of CUNCs following which there is a significant quenching of fluorescence that helps determine the presence of melamine in samples with concentrations as low as 0.01 μM which is 2000 times lower than that allowed by United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), which is 20 μM. Excellent results were obtained on testing real samples like milk, powdered milk and whey protein powder which were spiked with melamine, using the reported method. The limit of detection (LOD) established (0.01 μM), to the best of the knowledge, is the lowest reported using nanotechnology. This highly sensitive CUNCs-based fluorescence quenching method can find application in detection of melamine in milk and milk-based product samples.
doi: 10.17756/jfcn.2024-s1-017
Citation: Swaraj VJS, Jain G, Jangid A, Soni A, Singh R, et al. 2024. Turn-off Fluorescence Quenching Based Determination of Melamine in Milk Using Unmodified Copper Nanoclusters. J Food Chem Nanotechnol 10(S1): S133-S137.
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