A simple triazine (D-A) based organic fluorophore selective dual sensor for Copper(II) and dichromate ions and its solvatochromism, solid state sensing, logic gate applications

Abstract

Herein, the design and synthesis of triazine based fluorophore for selective dual sensing of copper(II) and dichromate ions in non-aqueous solution has been reported. The triazine based fluorophore (TZAS) was synthesized in very good yield from inexpensive starting materials. The fluorophore has been thoroughly characterized by various spectral techniques. The TZAS has N-(ethyl)amine and triazine core which are acting as donor and acceptor, respectively. Further, its interaction with various analytes in both solid and solution phases are studied. The TZAS compound shows positive solvatochromism upon increasing the solvent polarity from non-polar to polar solvent. The sensing ability of TZAS has been studied against various analytes (cations and anions). The results indicated that the detection limits for dichromate and copper ions in dimethylsulfoxide solvent medium are 1.3 × 10−8 M and 11 × 10−8 M respectively. The sensing mechanism of the proposed probe in the presence of the Cu2+/Cr2O72− were determined by the support of NMR, ESI-MS, FTIR spectra, Job's plot and density functional theory. Furthermore, the energy gap between frontier orbitals of TZAS and TZAS-analyte calculated through theoretical (DFT) analysis. The sensing performance of the TZAS is also examined in a logic circuit. This is the first dual coupled sensor of copper(II) cation and dichromate anion by organic fluorophore material.