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Rational design of fluorescent probe for Hg2+ by changing the chemical bond type
Tengli Cui1, Shengzhen Yu1, Zejing Chen2
1China Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergistic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech) 30 South Puzhu Road Nanjing 211816 P. R. China iamhbsun@njtech.edu.cn iamwhuang@njtech.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Two kinds of fluorescent probes DFBT and DFABT, and their corresponding water-soluble compounds WDFBT and WDFABT, based on the trimers containing a benzo[2,1,3]thiadiazole moiety and two fluorene moieties are synthesized. Their luminescent behavior towards Hg2+ ions and other various metal ions in organic and water solutions are studied in detail via absorption and emission spectroscopy. All these probes show a selective "on-off-type" fluorescent response to Hg2+ ions in solution over other metal ions with a maximum detection limit of 10-7 M. Importantly, the probe type can be changed from irreversible to reversible by altering the bridge mode between the functional units from C[triple bond, length as m-dash]C triple bond to C-C single bond. Their detection mechanisms towards Hg2+ are studied in detail via mass spectrometry and Job plots, which are attributed to irreversible chemical reaction for DFABT and WDFABT and a reversible coordination reaction for DFBT and WDFBT respectively. Our research results about this kind of organic fluorescent probe provide valuable information to the future design of practical Hg2+ fluorescent probes.
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