Aggregation induced emission active fluorescent sensor for the sensitive detection of Hg2+ based on organic-inorganic hybrid mesoporous material

Jing Wang; Xiangmin Zhang; Hai-Bo Liu; Di Zhang; Huiting Nong; Pingyu Wu; Pengxiang Chen; Dong Li

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2019.117585

Aggregation induced emission active fluorescent sensor for the sensitive detection of Hg2+ based on organic-inorganic hybrid mesoporous material

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2020 Feb 15:227:117585. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2019.117585. Epub 2019 Oct 16.

Authors

Jing Wang¹, Xiangmin Zhang², Hai-Bo Liu², Di Zhang², Huiting Nong², Pingyu Wu², Pengxiang Chen², Dong Li²

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, PR China. Electronic address: wjwyj82@gxu.edu.cn.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, PR China.

PMID: 31734570
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2019.117585

Abstract

We report the preparation of an organic-inorganic hybrid mesoporous material, PHC-SBA-15, derived from the coupling of a pyrene-based derivative PHC and mesoporous SBA-15 silica. Compared with the stable aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties of PHC, those of PHC-SBA-15 were more promoted and active due to the fixation of PHC and the space limitation in mesoporous SBA-15. The aggregation and disaggregation activities can be tuned by controlling the concentrations in aqueous media and changing the fluorescence color from yellow to blue. In addition to the controllable AIE properties, PHC-SBA-15 was applied for the highly selective and sensitive detection of Hg²⁺ through the fluorescence quenching of monomeric pyrene in aqueous media. The fluorescence intensity at 395 nm was linearly proportional to that of Hg²⁺ in the concentration ranges of 0-1.0 × 10^-5 and 1.0 × 10^-5-10 × 10^-5 M, showing a low detection limit of 1.02 × 10^-7 M. This work provides an effective strategy for modulating the AIE properties from non-active to active by introducing AIE stable molecule into mesoporous silica material. This method also favors the development of fluorescent sensors for detecting targets with high sensitivity and selectivity in aqueous media with less synthetic difficulties.

Keywords: Aggregation induced emission; Fluorescent sensor; Mesoporous material; Pyrene; Selectivity; Sensitivity.