Novel luminescent europium-centered hybrid material covalently grafted with organically modified titania via 2-substituted imidazophenanthroline for fluorescence sensing

By employing a rational approach, we prepared a novel kind of luminescent europium-centered hybrid material named Eu(tta)₃NCP-TiO₂. The resulting material was characterized by FT-IR spectra, SEM, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and photoluminescence spectra. The hybrid material features the combined advantages of the europium complex and the titania host, exhibiting not only good thermostability, but also long luminescence lifetime. Owing to the excellent luminescence of this material, the application in detecting organic small molecule solvents and metal ions was explored systematically. Significantly, Eu(tta)₃NCP-TiO₂ exhibits superior detection for nitrobenzene molecule and Cu²⁺ ion in DMF (N,N-dimethylformamide) medium. Furthermore, the limit of detection (LOD) of Eu(tta)₃NCP-TiO₂ for nitrobenzene and Cu²⁺ ion can be counted as 5.593 × 10^?5 and 9.566 × 10^?5 mol/L, respectively. The results demonstrate that Eu(tta)₃NCP-TiO₂ can serve as an efficient fluorescence probe for the detection of sensing of nitrobenzene and Cu²⁺ ion.