The detection of highly toxic CS2, which is known as a notorious occupational hazard in various industrial processes, is important from both environmental and public safety perspectives. We describe here a robust type of chemical-reaction-based supramolecular fluorescent nanoprobes for ratiometric determination of CS2 with high selectivity and sensitivity in water medium. The micellar nanoprobes self-assemble from amphiphilic pyrene-modified hyperbranched polyethylenimine (Py-HPEI) polymers with intense pyrene excimer emission. Selective sensing is based on a CS2-specific reaction with hydrophilic amino groups to produce hydrophobic dithiocarbamate moieties, which can strongly quench the pyrene excimer emission via a known photoinduced electron transfer (PET) mechanism. Therefore, the developed micellar nanoprobes are free of the H2S interference problem often encountered in the widely used colorimetric assays and proved to show high selectivity over many potentially competing chemical species. Importantly, the developed approach is capable of CS2 sensing even in complex tap and river water samples. In addition, in view of the modular design principle of these powerful micellar nanoprobes, the sensing strategy used here is expected to be applicable to the development of various sensory systems for other environmentally important guest species.
Keywords: carbon disulfide; dithiocarbamate; excimer emission; ratiometric fluorescent probe; self-assembled micellar nanoprobe.