Novel luminescent europium-centered hybrid material covalently grafted with organically modified titania via 2-substituted imidazophenanthroline for fluorescence sensing

Abstract

By employing a rational approach, we prepared a novel kind of luminescent europium-centered hybrid material named Eu(tta)3NCP-TiO2. The resulting material was characterized by FT-IR spectra, SEM, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and photoluminescence spectra. The hybrid material features the combined advantages of the europium complex and the titania host, exhibiting not only good thermostability, but also long luminescence lifetime. Owing to the excellent luminescence of this material, the application in detecting organic small molecule solvents and metal ions was explored systematically. Significantly, Eu(tta)3NCP-TiO2 exhibits superior detection for nitrobenzene molecule and Cu2+ ion in DMF (N,N-dimethylformamide) medium. Furthermore, the limit of detection (LOD) of Eu(tta)3NCP-TiO2 for nitrobenzene and Cu2+ ion can be counted as 5.593 × 10−5 and 9.566 × 10−5 mol/L, respectively. The results demonstrate that Eu(tta)3NCP-TiO2 can serve as an efficient fluorescence probe for the detection of sensing of nitrobenzene and Cu2+ ion.