Quinolone based chemosensor for the naked-eye and spectrophotometric detection of Cu2+in aqueous media

Abstract

A new 4-hydroxy-2-quinolone based chemosensor (BPHTQ-1) was designed for the spectrophotometric and naked-eye detection of Cu2+. The chemosensor displayed a high selectivity and sensitivity towards Cu2+in the presence of other competitive metal cations in pure aqueous media. The Cu2+recognition furnished a distinguishable color change of BPHTQ-1 from colorless to yellow with a significant hyperchromic shift at 300 nm. The S and O atoms of BPHTQ-1 provided a 1:1 binding scaffold for the recognition of Cu2+ion with a high binding affinity of 19,338 M- 1and a detection limit of 1.39 μM, which is quite low compared with World Health Organization (WHO) reports.