Study of fluorescence quenching in aluminum-doped ceria nanoparticles: potential molecular probe for dissolved oxygen

This work investigates a novel usage of aluminum-doped ceria nanoparticles (ADC-NPs), as the molecular probe in optical fluorescence quenching for sensing the dissolved oxygen (DO). Cerium oxide (ceria) nanoparticles can be considered one of the most unique nanomaterials that are being studied today due to the diffusion and reactivity of oxygen vacancies in ceria, which contributes to its high oxygen storage capability. Aluminum can be considered a promising dopant to increase the oxygen ionic conductivity in ceria nanoparticles which can improve the sensitivity of ceria nanoparticles to DO. The fluorescence intensity of ADC-NPs, synthesized via chemical precipitation, is found to have a strong inverse relationship with the DO concentration in aqueous solutions. Stern-Volmer constant of ADC-NPs at room temperature is determined to be 454.6 M(-1), which indicates that ADC-NPs have a promising sensitivity to dissolved oxygen, compared to many presently used fluorophores. In addition, Stern-Volmer constant is found to have a relatively small dependence on temperature between 25 °C to 50 °C, which shows excellent thermal stability of ADC-NPs sensitivity. Our work suggests that ADC-NPs, at 6 nm, are the smallest diameter DO molecular probes between the currently used optical DO sensors composed of different nanostructures. This investigation can improve the performance of fluorescence-quenching DO sensors for industrial and environmental applications.