An efficient phenanthroimidazole-based luminogen for specific and selective detection of sarin gas surrogate, diethylchlorophosphate

Abstract

The nerve agent's extreme toxicity makes it a prominent target to detect them to save global harmony. In the present contribution, we have introduced a phenanthroimidazole-based luminogen, BIB, for specific and selective detection of sarin gas surrogate diethylchlorophosphate (DCP) within the stores of various analogous toxic analytes. BIB displayed a highly distinct ratiometric fluorescence response toward detecting toxic sarin gas, mimicking DCP among all the other guest analytes showing a fluorogenic color change from blue to bluish-green color fluorescence under the exposure of a 365 nm UV lamp irradiation, which is wholly reversed due to the introduction of triethylamine (TEA). The reversibility is prominent in both the liquid and vapor states of DCP. Our probe BIB can selectively detect DCP with a low detection limit to µM range and superior to many available literatures. BIB's reversible and ratiometric response for detecting DCP provides a potential application as a portable and displayable photonic sensing tool for on-site detection. The successful demonstrations of BIB for practical application in detecting sarin gas encourage the researcher to explore the probable applications of imidazole-based luminogen as a photonic sensing device for recognizing various target analytes.