Highly sensitive fluorescent triarylimidazole derivatives for sensing of 2,4,6-trinitrophenol in aqueous solution and its application for actual environment detection

Jianying Hao; Yao Wei; Lu Li; Chengwei Lü; Yue An

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2023.123753

Highly sensitive fluorescent triarylimidazole derivatives for sensing of 2,4,6-trinitrophenol in aqueous solution and its application for actual environment detection

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2024 Mar 5:308:123753. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2023.123753. Epub 2023 Dec 9.

Authors

Jianying Hao¹, Yao Wei¹, Lu Li¹, Chengwei Lü², Yue An¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Liaoning Normal University, Huanghe Road 850#, Dalian 116029, PR China.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Liaoning Normal University, Huanghe Road 850#, Dalian 116029, PR China. Electronic address: chengweilv@126.com.

PMID: 38091647
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2023.123753

Abstract

Two highly sensitive fluorescent triarylimidazole derivatives were synthesized by modifying imidazole with coumarin and large conjugate rigid plane structure. XM-F and XM-L emitted bright yellow-green fluorescent light. Their intense conjugation system generated strong π-π electrostatic interactions with TNP, accompanied by the formation of hydrogen bonds to achieve rapid detection of TNP within 25 s. The detection limits were as low as 0.049 μM and 0.071 μM, respectively. Probes had been successfully applied to rapid detection of TNP in real water samples and manufactured into portable fluorescent test strips. In view of excellent performance of XM-F, it was used to achieve real-time, portable, on-site quantitative detection of TNP by a colorimeter and a smartphone platform. In addition, XM-F also successfully processed into probe-coated TLC plates for efficient detection of fingerprints contaminated with TNP.

Keywords: 2,4,6-Trinitrophenol; Fluorescence detection; Smartphone sensing platform; Triarylimidazole; Water sample detection.