Abstract
Fluoride anions play a key role in human health and chemical engineering, such as in organic synthesis and biological processes. The development of high-sensitivity naked-eye detection sensors for fluoride anions in organic solutions is crucial and challenging. In this study, (3Z,3′Z)-3,3′-[4,4,9,9-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-4,9-dihydro-s-indaceno(1,2-b:5,6-b′)dithiophene]-2,7-diylbis(methan-1-yl-1-ylidene) bis(6-bromo-indolin-2-one) (IDTI) was designed and used as a fluoride chemosensor for the first time. IDTI is a highly sensitive fluoride sensor with a detection limit of as low as 1 × 10−7 M. In addition, upon the reaction of IDTI with fluoride anions in a tetrahydrofuran (THF) solution, color changes from red to yellow under ambient light and from purple to green under UV light were detectable by the naked eye. These studies indicate that IDTI is a promising fluoride chemosensor.
Highlights
The development of high-efficiency and sensitive fluoride anion (F−) sensors is crucial, since F− plays a key role in chemical military fields, industry, organic synthesis, biological and medical processes, and even human health (Wade et al, 2011; Li et al, 2012; Yang et al, 2012, 2013; Sun et al, 2017)
The produced IDTI exhibited low solubility in most common organic solvents; such solubility was sufficient for studying the behavior of the fluoride anion chemosensor
The interaction between the IDTI chromophore and F− was first investigated through color changes that were detectable by the naked eye
Summary
The development of high-efficiency and sensitive fluoride anion (F−) sensors is crucial, since F− plays a key role in chemical military fields, industry, organic synthesis, biological and medical processes, and even human health (Wade et al, 2011; Li et al, 2012; Yang et al, 2012, 2013; Sun et al, 2017). Several different optical chemosensors for fluoride anions in organic solutions have been developed (Zhang et al, 2018). Fluoride anions, which are among the smallest anions, exhibit strong electronegative properties Such properties enable F− to form strong hydrogen bonds with –NH groups or deprotonate the –NH protons of the designed receptor, resulting in an evident optical spectrum change either in the absorption or emission spectrum (Kaur and Choi, 2015; Feng et al, 2018). The t-Boc units could be removed, and lactam hydrogen appeared. They reported that the resulting polymer cannot only be used for the detection of F− and the extraction of F− from the organic solution. Wu et al (2019) designed a dye containing hydroxyl to detect F− in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO); this approach exhibited a detection limit of as low as 1.79 μM. Deng et al (2020) reported aminobenzodifuranone
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