A materialized intelligent sensing platform driven by ultra-sensitive fluorescent probe: Smart phone-assisted...

Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) has long been recognized as an environmental pollutant, and excessive intake of SO₂ and its derivatives (HSO₃^-/SO₃^2-) is harmful to human health. In this paper, we report a specific recognition of HSO₃^- fluorescent probe RQB-RP, which exhibits color-enhancing and strong fluorescence activation, good water solubility, fast response (4 s), high fluorescence quantum efficiency (Ф = 21.87 %) and high sensitivity (detection limit = 120.66 nM), and has a strong potential for application. Furthermore, the probe RQB-RP was materialized and combined with a smartphone sensing platform to achieve on-site visual quantitative detection of HSO₃^- without the need for large-scale instrumentation. The RQB-RP also has the ability to accurately detect HSO₃^- levels in food and Chinese medicine samples to assess compliance and safety. Furthermore, RQB-RP's excellent biocompatibility has been successfully used for the in situ detection of endogenous and exogenous HSO₃^- in mitochondria of MCF-7 cells.