Luminescent organic molecules are of important realistic significance to the human health and ecological environment due to their fascinating applications. Here we report the design and synthesis of luminescent organic-molecules by introducing two or four NH-pyrazolate groups as mercury-binding moieties to aromatic cores. Interestingly, the new aromatic tetraphenylene-bridged multi-NH-pyrazoles exhibit strong fluorescence in both aggregate and solid state and constitutes highly selective proof-of-concept luminescent sensor for Hg(II) ion among various competitive transition-metal ions in both organic and mixed solutions via metal-nitrogen binding. Especially, the present sensor including two NH-pyrazolyl groups showed an extremely high sensitivity with low limit of detection of 7.26 and 3.67 nM. The proposed design strategy provides a wide scope for the construction of unique turn-on sensors with substantial potential in the sense of heavy metal pollution in enviromental water samples.
Keywords: Aggregation-induced emission; Fluorescent chemosensor; Hg(II) ion; NH-Pyrazole; Turn-on fluorescence.
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