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Highly Sensitive ‘on–off’ Pyrene Based AIEgen for Selective Sensing of Copper (II) Ions in Aqueous Media

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Abstract

A Fluorescent chemosensor based on pyrene scaffold, 5-diethylamino-2-(pyren-1-yliminomethyl)-phenol (PDS) is synthesized using condensation method. It displays novel aggregation-induced emission (AIE) phenomena in its aggregated/solid state. The AIE characteristic of PDS is studied in CH3CN/H2O mixtures at different volume percentage of water and morphology of the aggregated particles are investigated by DLS and optical fluorescence microscopic study. The probe is aggregated into ordered one-dimensional (1-D) rod like microcrystals and exhibit high efficiency of solid-state emission with green colour. By taking advantage of its interesting AIE feature, the aggregated hydrosol has been utilized as ‘off–on’ type fluorescence switching chemosensor with superb selectivity and sensitivity towards Cu2+ions and the limit of detection (LOD) was calculated as low as 6.3 µM. A high Stern–Volmer quenching constant was estimated to be 2.88 × 105 M−1. The proposed chemosensor with AIE feature reveals a prospective view for the on-site visual recognition of Cu2+ ions in fluorescent paper strips and the synthesized probe is also exploited to find out the concentration of Cu2+ions in real water samples.

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Acknowledgements

P. K. Giri (Ref. No.: 228/(CSIR-UGC NET DEC 2017)) and S. S. Samanta (Award No.: 09/599(0084)/2019-EMR-I), and thank UGC and CSIR, New Delhi, India for their individual fellowship. Departmental instrumental facilities from DST FIST and UGC SAP programmes are gratefully acknowledged. We also acknowledge the help render by USIC, Vidyasagar University for doing both steady state and time resolved fluorescence study.

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All the funders have been acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, 721102, West Bengal, India

    Prabhat Kumar Giri, Shashanka Shekhar Samanta, Naren Mudi, Milan Shyamal & Ajay Misra

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  1. Prabhat Kumar Giri
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All the authors (Prabhat Kumar Giri, Shashanka Sekhar Samanta, Naren Mudi, Milan Shyamal and Ajay Misra) made substantial contribution while preparing the manuscript and approve the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ajay Misra.

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A licensed version of Gaussian-16 software is used in computational study.

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Giri, P.K., Samanta, S.S., Mudi, N. et al. Highly Sensitive ‘on–off’ Pyrene Based AIEgen for Selective Sensing of Copper (II) Ions in Aqueous Media. J Fluoresc 32, 1059–1071 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-022-02929-y

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