Development of dipodal fluorescence sensor of iron for real samples based on pyrene modified anthracene

A novel pyrene modified anthracene dipodal sensor was prepared by a simple synthetic method for the sensitive determination of iron ions in real samples. The chemical characterization analyses including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry were carried out to characterize the target fluorescent sensor. Photophysical and electrochemical behaviors of the sensor were studied by the absorption, excitation-emission matrix analysis, steady-state fluorescence, three-dimensional fluorescence, and cyclic and square wave voltammetry, respectively. The fluorescent sensor properties were evaluated via Ultraviolet–visible and fluorescence spectroscopies. According to obtained results, the fluorescence signal of the sensor was selectively quenched with interaction with Fe³⁺ ions. The spectrofluorimetric determination of iron, in real water and medicine samples were successfully carried out under optimized experimental conditions. A detection limit and linear working range were calculated as 0.265 μM and 0.275–55.000 μM, respectively which demonstrated the ability of the simple and sensitive sensor for slight amounts of iron. The obtained detection limit for iron determination with the presented novel fluorescent sensor was less than nearly 20 times the tolerance limit (5.40 µM) in drinking water that was determined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The accuracy of the newly developed method was evaluated by Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy and spike/recovery test which demonstrated that the developed fluorescent sensor has high accuracy for fast, easy and accessible determination of iron at 95% confidence level.