Curcumin-derivatives as fluorescence-electrochemical dual probe for ultrasensitive detections of picric acid in aqueous media

Anupama Rai; Niki Sweta Jha; Padma Sharma; Suresh Tiwari; Ranga Subramanian

doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2024.126113

Curcumin-derivatives as fluorescence-electrochemical dual probe for ultrasensitive detections of picric acid in aqueous media

Talanta. 2024 Apr 22:275:126113. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2024.126113. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Anupama Rai¹, Niki Sweta Jha², Padma Sharma¹, Suresh Tiwari³, Ranga Subramanian³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology, Ashok Rajpath, Patna, 800005, Bihar, India.
² Department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology, Ashok Rajpath, Patna, 800005, Bihar, India. Electronic address: nikij@nitp.ac.in.
³ Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, 801106, Bihar, India.

PMID: 38669958
DOI: 10.1016/j.talanta.2024.126113

Abstract

We are reporting the two curcumin derivatives, ferrocenyl curcumin (Fc-cur) and 4-nitro-benzylidene curcumin (NBC), as a probe through dual modalities, i.e., fluorescence and electrochemical methods, for the detection of nitro-analytes, such as picric acid (PA). The probes exhibited aggregation-induced enhanced emission (AIEE), and the addition of picric acid (PA) demonstrated good and specific fluorimetric identification of PA in the aggregated state. By using density functional theory (DFT), the mechanism of picric acid's (PA) interactions with the probes was further investigated. DFT studies shows evidence of charge transfer from curcumin derivatives probe to picric acid resulting into the formation of an adduct. The reduction of trinitrophenol (PA) to 2, 4, 6-trinitrosophenol was investigated utilizing a probe-modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) with a good detection limit of 9.63 ± 0.001 pM and 41.01 ± 0.002 pM, respectively, for Fc-cur@GCE and NBC@GCE, taking into account the redox behavior of the probe. The applicability of the designed sensor has been utilized for real-time application in the estimation of picric acid in several water samples collected from the different source.

Keywords: Curcumin derivatives; Detection; Electrochemical sensing; Fluorescence turn-on; Picric acid.