A dual-channel ICT fluorescent probe assisted by smartphone for quantitative detection, and visualization of residual hydrazine in the living cells, water, soil, plant, and food samples.

BACKGROUND

Hydrazine (NH) serves as a crucial industrial raw material and finds extensive applications in the fields of medicine, pesticides, ecological environment, and textile dyes. Excessive residue of hydrazine will cause significant toxicity risks to the ecosystem and human health. Traditional detection methods often require multi-step pretreatment of samples, and complex instrumentation, and are time-consuming, which is not conducive to rapid on-site detection. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a method suitable for rapid detection of NH in multiple fields.

RESULTS

In this study, we constructed a red emission fluorescent probe (BCM). BCM can recognize NH by colorimetric and fluorescence dual-channel response with a good anti-interference ability and a low detection limitation. The fluorescence emission of BCM is attributed to the ICT effect by DFT calculations, and a new product 3H-benzo[f]chromene-2-carbaldehyde hydrazine is formed after BCM recognition of NH. A linear relationship was established between the ratio of red-blue (R/B) coming from the fluorescence color of BCM and the NH level. Hence, a BCM-based smartphone sensing platform for detecting NH was developed, and the NH content can be rapidly detected with satisfactory accuracy in the lake water samples. In addition, the residues of NH in soils, plants and food samples can be visualized, and BCM can image for NH in living cells, as well as NH vapor can be detected by using the electrospinning film loaded with BCM.

SIGNIFICANCE

In particular, the fluorescent probe BCM can be combined with a smartphone for the detection and visual imaging of hydrazine in environmental samples. We believe the BCM and smartphone-based sensing platforms constructed in this paper will be a powerful tool for visual quantitative detection of NH in the fields of food safety assessment, bioimaging, and environmental protection.