Highly Sensitive Dansyl-Based Chemosensor for Detection of Cu2+ in Aqueous Solution and Zebrafish

Ju Byeong Chae; Dongju Yun; Hangyul Lee; Hyojin Lee; Ki-Tae Kim; Cheal Kim

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b00970

Highly Sensitive Dansyl-Based Chemosensor for Detection of Cu²⁺ in Aqueous Solution and Zebrafish

ACS Omega. 2019 Jul 24;4(7):12537-12543. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00970. eCollection 2019 Jul 31.

Authors

Ju Byeong Chae¹, Dongju Yun¹, Hangyul Lee¹, Hyojin Lee¹, Ki-Tae Kim¹, Cheal Kim¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Fine Chemistry and Department of Environmental Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01186, Korea.

Abstract

A new dansyl-based chemosensor (2-(4-((5-(dimethylamino)naphthalen-1-yl)sulfonyl)piperazin-1-yl)-N-(quinolin-8-yl)acetamide) (DC) for detecting Cu²⁺ was synthesized and characterized. DC showed great selectivity to Cu²⁺ by a fluorescent "on-off" detection method. Job plot, ESI-mass spectroscopy, and ¹H NMR titration suggested a 1 to 1 binding mode between DC and Cu²⁺. The detection limit was determined to be 43 nM, which is greatly below the WHO guidelines. In addition, DC can be applied to real samples and zebrafish imaging. The fluorescence quenching mechanism was proposed as the enhancement of intramolecular charge transfer with calculations.