Selective Quantification of Carnitine Enantiomers Using Chiral Cysteine-Capped CdSe(ZnS) Quantum Dots

We report the first observation of selective and specific recognition of chiral l-cysteine (l-Cys)- or d-cysteine (d-Cys)-capped CdSe(ZnS) quantum dots (QDs) with carnitine enantiomers in aqueous solution. The intensity fluorescence of l-Cys-capped QDs decay in the presence of d-carnitine but are not affected by l-carnitine. On the other hand, the fluorescence of d-Cys-capped QDs was only affected by l-carnitine. The applicability of chiral Cys-capped QDs for the analysis of chiral mixtures on enantiomers has been demonstrated for 1:100 mixtures, and the results that were obtained had high precision (