Preparation of nano-polyhedral-oligomeric-silsesquioxane-sol based on aggregation induced emission effect and research on fluoride ion identification mechanism

Abstract

Fluoride plays an indispensable role in physiological process, it is widely used in the fields of toothpaste and medicine, etc. However, excess fluoride ions can cause acute gastritis, malignant skeletal fluorosis and kidney problems. Consequently, the accurate identification of fluoride is of great importance. Therefore, we functionalized octa (aminopropyl) polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (OAP-POSS) (T8) with traditional aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) aromatic luminogens to obtain phthalic-anhydride-OAP-POSS (PAOP), which not only solves the problem of ACQ, but also can be used to identify fluorine ions. The identification limit was 1.27 × 10-5 mol/L in THF(tetrahydrofuran) and 5.86 × 10-4 mol/L in DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide). Moreover, through theoretical calculation (DFT and TD-DFT) and experiment, we further studied the action mechanism of fluorine on silicon and explored the possibility of F- encapsulated in POSS cage.