Abstract
Accurate monitoring of versatile metal ions in complicated environmental or biological samples is meaningful for avoiding heavy metal poisoning accidents. To reduce the production cost of a metal ion sensor array, we intended to develop solvent directed fluorescent sensor arrays on the basis of a single dye molecule. Herein, two fluorescent ESIPT dyes named SC1 and SC2 were designed by incorporating different numbers of benzothiazole units as the metal ion binding site. It was discovered that SC1 was highly selective toward Zn2+ in all tested solvents, while a solvent directed cross-responsive sensing behavior was observed for SC2. Therefore a three-component sensor array SC2SA was readily constructed by simply dissolving SC2 in common solvents including ethanol, DMF and DMSO. The sensor array was determined to be accurate for semi-quantitative discrimination and detection of Zn2+, Cd2+, Mg2+, Fe2+ and Fe3+ in diluted serum media. Moreover, sensor array SC2SA was also successfully applied for differentiating Zn2+/Cd2+ and Fe2+/Fe3+ in pure and mixed forms and reliable identification of unknown Zn2+, Cd2+ and Mg2+ in diluted serum samples.
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