Abstract
Chemical warfare agents such as phosgene and nerve agents pose severe threats to national defense and public safety, yet the development of bifunctional ratiometric fluorescent probes for them is still in its infancy. Aimed at this target, an intramolecular-charge-transfer (ICT) modulation strategy via incorporating donors with varied electron-donating ability, is put forward. Based on it, a series of donor(D)-acceptor(A)-type fluorescent probes are designed and synthesized. It is found that as the ICT strength of probes weakens, a ratiometric fluorescent probe with bi-analyte identification of phosgene and diethylchlorophosphate (DCP, the mimic of nerve agent sarin) is gained. Upon exposure to phosgene and DCP, 3-(benzo[d]thiazol-2-yl)-4′-(1,2,2-triphenylvinyl)-[1,1′-biphenyl]-4-amine (BTTPE), with the weakest ICT property, presents discriminative bathochromic shifts (Δλem = 58 nm for phosgene and Δλem = 152 nm for DCP) and favorable limits of detection (LODs in solution: 6.42 nM for phosgene; 6.80 µM for DCP). Besides, the prepared BTTPE-based paper test strips combined with a smartphone can detect phosgene vapor under the colorimetric-fluorescent dual-mode sensing and enable the visual recognition and quantitative detection of DCP vapor, with LODs in the vapor phase of 0.29 ppm for phosgene and 0.49 ppm for DCP. Hereby, this work not only provides the ICT modulation strategy for the first time to realize the ratiometric fluorescence detection of phosgene/DCP but also opens up a new avenue for tailoring multifunctional fluorescent probes.
Published Version
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