A Facile Strategy for the Construction of Purely Organic Optical Sensors Capable of Distinguishing D2 O from H2 O

Yanju Luo; Chuan Li; Wencheng Zhu; Xujun Zheng; Yan Huang; Zhiyun Lu

doi:10.1002/anie.201900806

A Facile Strategy for the Construction of Purely Organic Optical Sensors Capable of Distinguishing D₂ O from H₂ O

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 May 6;58(19):6280-6284. doi: 10.1002/anie.201900806. Epub 2019 Apr 2.

Authors

Yanju Luo¹, Chuan Li¹, Wencheng Zhu², Xujun Zheng¹, Yan Huang¹, Zhiyun Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry and Technology (Ministry of Education), College of Chemistry, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, P. R. China.
² Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200031, P. R. China.

PMID: 30865365
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201900806

Abstract

Owing to the quite similar chemical properties of H₂ O and D₂ O, rational molecular design of D₂ O optical sensors has not been realized so far. Now purely organic chromophores bearing OH groups with appropriate pK_a values are shown to display distinctly different optical responding properties toward D₂ O and H₂ O owing to the slight difference in acidity between D₂ O and H₂ O. This discovery is a new and facile strategy for the construction of D₂ O optical sensors. Through this strategy, ratiometric colorimetric D₂ O sensor of NIM-2F and colorimetric/fluorescent dual-channel D₂ O sensor of AF were acquired successfully. Both NIM-2F and AF can not only qualitatively distinguish D₂ O from H₂ O by the naked eye, but also quantitatively detect the H₂ O content in D₂ O.

Keywords: D2O; H2O; acidity; organic optical sensors; signaling hydroxy groups.

Abstract

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