Signal transfer with excitation-emission matrices between a portable fluorimeter based on light-emitting diodes and a master fluorimeter

Abstract

In this work, the transfer of the excitation-emission matrices between a portable fluorimeter based on LEDs and a master fluorimeter based on a xenon source was carried out. Enrofloxacin was the analyte of interest and it was measured alone or in binary mixtures with flumequine (partially overlapped signals) or with ciprofloxacin (fully overlapped signals). The maintenance and transfer of the unequivocal identification of the fluorophores between both instruments are shown. The precision in the determination performed with the portable fluorimeter approximated to that made with the master fluorimeter using this transfer and it did not introduce bias. The correlation coefficients of the calibrations based on PARAFAC using EEM signals were higher than 0.999, whereas the values of the capability of detection ranged from 14.8 to 26.9 μg L−1 for probabilities of false positive and false negative fixed at 0.05. These results contribute to the effort to perform the fluorimetric detection outside the laboratory and to promote the use of databases of fluorescence spectra for the unequivocal identification in remote of fluorophores of interest and/or regulated.