Novel fluorescent probe based on dicoumarin for rapid on-site detection of Hg2+ in loess

Youhong Jiang; Huiwen Li; Ruofei Chen; Wei Liu; Chunyang Chen; Zhongguo Li; Weisheng Liu

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2021.119438

Novel fluorescent probe based on dicoumarin for rapid on-site detection of Hg²⁺ in loess

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2021 Apr 15:251:119438. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119438. Epub 2021 Jan 6.

Authors

Youhong Jiang¹, Huiwen Li¹, Ruofei Chen¹, Wei Liu², Chunyang Chen³, Zhongguo Li⁴, Weisheng Liu⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, PR China.
² School of Nuclear Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, PR China.
³ College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, PR China. Electronic address: chency@lzu.edu.cn.
⁴ College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, PR China. Electronic address: zgli@lzu.edu.cn.
⁵ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, PR China. Electronic address: liuwsgroup@163.com.

PMID: 33461142
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119438

Abstract

It is momentous to exploit rapid, specific and on-site detection methods for mercury ion (Hg²⁺) in loess, as the severe toxicity of Hg²⁺ and the fragile ecological environment of Loess Plateau. In this paper, a novel fluorescent probe DC-Hg (Dicoumarin-Hg) was synthesized by 3-hydroxybiscoumarin and phenyl thiochloroformate at room temperature. DC-Hg could exclusively combine with Hg²⁺ to 'turn-on' yellow fluorescence at 530 nm among various other metal ions. The relationship between the remarkable increase in intensity and concentration of Hg²⁺ was associated with photoinduced electron transfer (PET), which was founded by Job's plot and ¹H NMR. The limit detection of DC-Hg showed to 85.25 nM in aqueous medium, which could be applied to varying situations. For the loess samples, they were only extracted by hand-shake and filtration for quickly complete the treatment operation on site, and the results proved that DC-Hg could satisfactorily detect the Hg²⁺ in mercury pollution areas.

Keywords: Dicoumarin; Fluorescent probe; Loess Plateau; Mercury ion; Soil detection.