A “turn-on” silver nanocluster based fluorescent sensor for folate receptor detection and cancer cell imaging under visual analysis

Abstract

A novel terminal protection based label-free and "turn-on" fluorescent sensor for detection of folate receptors (FRs) and HeLa cells is developed by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and silver nanoclusters (AgNCs). Multilevel visual analysis (m(2)VA) was firstly proposed and applied in optimizing the experimental parameters.