Selective turn-off sensing of picric acid and p-nitrophenol using fluorescent histidine

Abstract

In this communication, a bluish-green fluorescent histidine was synthesized by direct heating of an aqueous solution of histidine at 70°C for 48 h and characterized by various techniques like FT-IR, UV–Vis,fluorescence, FESEM and DLS. Then, the sensing ability of the fluorescent histidine was applied towards nitroaromatic compounds in pure aqueous medium. The fluorescence of fluorescent histidine at 450 nm was selectively quenched upon addition of picric acid (PA) and para-nitrophenol (PNP) through energy transfer mechanism among the other tested nitroaromatic compounds. With the proposed sensor, the PA and PNP can be estimated down to 27.16 × 10−7 M and 35.26 × 10−7M, respectively without any interference from other tested nitroaromatic compounds. Finally, the practical utility of the developed sensor was applied for the detection of PA and PNP in real environmental samples.