Abstract Heavy metal ion pollution poses severe risks for human health and the environment, so the development of an effective method for detecting heavy-metal ions remains a serious task. Although… Click to show full abstract
Abstract Heavy metal ion pollution poses severe risks for human health and the environment, so the development of an effective method for detecting heavy-metal ions remains a serious task. Although fluorescence detection of metal ions has been reported, there are few studies on multifunctional fluorescent probes. In this paper, we synthesized a luminescent coordination compound, [Zn(OOCC6F5)(H2O)(C12H8N2)2](OOCC6F5) (1), and the fluorescence sensing results exhibited that compound 1 is a multifunctional luminescent probe for detecting Fe3+, Cu2+, Ni2+ and CrO42− ions by fluorescence quenching. Luminescence studies demonstrated that compound 1 can rapidly detect Fe3+, Cu2+, Ni2+ and CrO42− ions with excellent selectivity and sensitivity, where the quenching efficiencies Ksv (Fe3+: 4.99 × 105 M−1; Cu2+: 1.50 × 105 M−1; Ni2+: 2.68 × 104 M−1; CrO42−: 2.03 × 105 M−1) and detection limits (Fe3+: 0.240 μM; Cu2+: 0.287 μM; Ni2+: 0.491 μM; CrO42−: 0.388 μM) are regarded as being excellent values for a coordination compound sensor detecting Fe3+, Cu2+, Ni2+ and CrO42− ions. We anticipate that a simple and low-cost detection method utilizing compound 1 could be employed to monitor human health and help solve environmental pollution.