4.8 Article

Facile crosslinking of polythiophenes by polyethylenimine via ester aminolysis for selective Cu(II) detection in water

Journal

BIOSENSORS & BIOELECTRONICS
Volume 109, Issue -, Pages 255-262

Publisher

ELSEVIER ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2018.03.028

Keywords

Water-soluble conjugated polymers; Polythiophene; Copper detection; Fluorescence quenching; Crosslinking

Funding

  1. National Basic Research Program of China [2015CB856300]
  2. 1000 Young Talent Program
  3. National Natural Science Foundation of China [21474046]
  4. Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University

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Functionalization of pi-conjugated polymers is dispensable for solubilization of the rigid and hydrophobic backbones in water. However, polymer aggregation is always present and leads to issues with complication and reproducibility in spectral properties. Herein, we reported a simple and robust method to make a series of conjugated polymer nanostructures by a crosslinking strategy. In favor of multivalency effect, polythionenes with various chain lengths were functionalized with branched polyethylenimine (PEI) via ester aminolysis reaction under mild conditions. Photophysical studies revealed the conjugated backbones could be well stabilized and dispersed in water. By taking advantage of intermolecular recognition interaction between copper ions and cationic PEI, we applied crosslinked polythiophenes as a nano probe at very low concentration (0.01 mg/mL) to fluorescently detect copper ions with high sensitivity up to 10 nM and selectivity over other metal ions in aqueous solutions, without occurrence of detectable aggregates. The overall performance of our nano probes outperforms reported water-soluble polymers-based probes, particularly in probe availability and manipulation as well as selective copper detection capability.

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