A novel pyrenyl-furan hydrazone on paper-based device for the selective detection of trinitrotoluene

Abstract

A new fluorescent probe (T2) containing pyrene-hydrazone furan moieties was developed and synthesized through a two-step process and then coated onto filter paper to form a paper-based sensor for TNT detection. The T2 sensor uses photoinduced electron transfer (PET) induced fluorescence quenching to detect TNT. The sensor properties were studied using fluorescence spectra, ¹H-NMR titration and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The reaction time of the T2 paper-based sensor for TNT detection was only five minutes. A smartphone was used as an alternative instrument to detect fluorescence signals and a typical image J-processing application was employed to evaluate the grayscale values of the smartphone-captured photographs. The sensor showed a linear concentration range for TNT detection of between 30–500 μM and a detection limit of 30 μM. The T2 paper-based sensor was found to have high selectivity and sensitivity, and it can successfully detect and image TNT in actual samples. This research demonstrates that a T2 paper-based sensor is a promising alternative for TNT detection owing to its short reaction time, high selectivity, sensitivity, and easy applicability.