Boosting the Chemiluminescence of Carbon Dots via Cu/I Dopant for Sensitive Resorcinol Assay

ABSTRACT In this work, a novel chemiluminescence (CL) system was developed using carbon dots via Cu and I dopant (Cu‐I‐CD) for the rapid detection of resorcinol (RS). The Cu‐I‐CD were synthesized through a one‐pot hydrothermal method using citric acid, ethylenediamine, copper chloride, and potassium iodate as reaction reagents. It was observed that the Cu‐I‐CD could catalyze the decomposition of H 2 O 2 to generate a strong CL emission signal, whereas the introduction of RS resulted in significant CL quenching. Under optimized conditions, the CL intensity decreased linearly with RS concentration over the range of 1.0–100.0 μM, with a detection limit of 0.3 μM. The proposed method was successfully applied to the quantification of RS in water, hair dyes and pharmaceutical samples, achieving satisfactory recoveries of 92.5%–105.0%.