One-step synthesis of water-soluble and highly fluorescent MoS2 quantum dots for detection of hydrogen peroxide and glucose

Transition metal chalcogenides, especially molybdenum disulfide, have recently got wide attention from researchers because of their unique intrinsic characteristics. However, until now, few literatures have reported the photoluminescent MoS2 materials and their applications. In this work, we reported a bottom-up strategy to synthesize water-soluble molybdenum disulfide quantum dots (MoS2 QDs) through a facile hydrothermal route using sodium molybdate and glutathione as Mo and S sources. The obtained MoS2 QDs show blue emission with a high quantum yield (∼10.3%) and robust dispersibility and storage stability optical property in aqueous solution. During the experiment, we found that in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), the fluorescence of MoS2 QDs is quenched due to the interaction between H2O2 and MoS2 QDs. Simultaneously, glucose oxidase catalyzes the oxidation of glucose to produce gluconic acid and H2O2, so we can use this probe to detect glucose. By reason of the high zymolyte specificity of glucose oxidase, the detection of glucose has good selectivity and sensitivity with a detection limit of 5.16 μM. Finally, the method is successfully applied for detection of glucose in fetal bovine serum samples.