Affiliations 

  • 1 College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Research Center for Ultra Fine Powder Materials, Key Laboratory of Functional Small Organic Molecule, Ministry of Education and Jiangxi's Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, PR China
  • 2 School of Pharmacy, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou 510006, PR China
  • 3 UCSI University Kuala Lumpur Campus, Jalan Puncak Menara Gading 1, 56000 Bandar Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 4 College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Research Center for Ultra Fine Powder Materials, Key Laboratory of Functional Small Organic Molecule, Ministry of Education and Jiangxi's Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, PR China. Electronic address: chenghuizeng@jxnu.edu.cn
J Hazard Mater, 2021 07 05;413:125291.
PMID: 33588337 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125291

Abstract

Real-time and visual monitoring of pollutants in the air is of great importance since they are usually cannot be seen, smelled, or touched. Lanthanide nano-cluster is a kind of luminescent sensor for various species. However, controlling synthesis of lanthanide nano-cluster remains experimentally challenging. In this work, four series of lanthanide-barium (Ln-Ba) nano-clusters of Dy2Ba (1), Tb2Ba2 (2), Ln4Ba3 (Ln = Tb, 3a; Eu, 3b), Tb4Ba4 (4) were assembled through precisely controlling the pH of the reactant solutions. The work features the first example that the number of cluster's nuclei changes regularly with the pH. Moreover, investigation reveals that nano-cluster 3a is a highly selective and sensitive sensor towards acetylacetone (acac) and aniline. Interestingly, easy-to-use sensing devices of test paper, agarose gel, and five kinds of film on CaCO3, polyfoam, coin, mask, and wall that based on 3a were fabricated by facile methods. The seven sensing devices showed remarkable ability to sense aniline and acac vapors with visibility to the naked eyes. This is the first work on multiple real-time and visual sensing devices based on the lanthanide nano-cluster.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.