“Silver effect” enhanced fluorescence for sensitive detection of crystal violet utilizing long wavelength emission bimetallic gold-silver nanoclusters

Crystal violet (CV), widely used as a fungicide in aquaculture, is susceptible to enrichment in fish and thus poses a threat to human health. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a simple, sensitive and cost-effective method to detect CV. To this need, duck egg white-stabilized gold-silver nanoclusters (DEW-AuAgNCs) with long wavelength fluorescence emission were synthesized via microwave method in 1 min. The raw materials used were easily available and environmentally friendly. And based on the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between DEW-AuAgNCs and CV, a fluorescence quenching method was established for CV detection. The detection limit of this method was 1.7 × 10−8 mol/L, which was lower than most of the reported methods. In addition, prominent performance of DEW-AuAgNCs with long wavelength emission can be applied for the detection of CVs in real organism.