Issue 8, 2014

A novel fluorescent ‘off-on-off’ probe for relay recognition of Zn2+ and Cu2+ derived from N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)amine

Abstract

A metal-to-metal relay recognition was discovered with sequence specificity via a fluorescence ‘off-on-off’ phenomenon. We present here the synthesis of a new N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)amine-based fluorescent sensor termed NBPA and its application as a selective relay probe for sensing of free trace zinc and copper ions. The addition of Zn2+ to NBPA causes a drastic enhancement of fluorescent intensity by the formation of a 1 : 1 NBPA–Zn2+ complex whereas other cations have no response. Moreover, Cu2+ can induce fluorescence quenching in the NBPA–Zn2+ system by the formation of a 1 : 1 NBPA–Cu2+ complex confirmed by Job's Plot. The signal change of the sensor is based on the chelation-enhanced fluorescence (CHEF) effect of NBPA–Zn2+ with the inhibition of the photoinduced electron transfer (PET) effect and the paramagnetic nature of Cu2+ to the NBPA–Zn2+ system. Under optimized conditions, the fluorescence intensity is linear to the concentration of Zn2+ and Cu2+ separately, exhibiting good linearities from 1.0 × 10−6 M to 8.0 × 10−6 M and 1.0 × 10−6 M to 1.0 × 10−5 M (R2 = 0.9996 and R2 = 0.9914) with detection limits of 7.89 × 10−7 M and 1.27 × 10−7 M, respectively. Furthermore, the rapid, selective feature enables the proposed sensor to be promising in monitoring Zn2+ and Cu2+ in biological and environmental research with good accuracy and precision.

Graphical abstract: A novel fluorescent ‘off-on-off’ probe for relay recognition of Zn2+ and Cu2+ derived from N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)amine

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
02 Dec 2013
Accepted
02 Jan 2014
First published
06 Jan 2014

Analyst, 2014,139, 1868-1875

A novel fluorescent ‘off-on-off’ probe for relay recognition of Zn2+ and Cu2+ derived from N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)amine

Y. Liu, Q. Fei, H. Shan, M. Cui, Q. Liu, G. Feng and Y. Huan, Analyst, 2014, 139, 1868 DOI: 10.1039/C3AN02230G

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