A Facile Strategy for the Construction of Purely Organic Optical Sensors Capable of Distinguishing D2O from H2O

Owing to the quite similar chemical properties of H2O and D2O, rational molecular design of D2O optical sensors has not been realized so far. Now purely organic chromophores bearing OH groups with appropriate pK(a) values are shown to display distinctly different optical responding properties toward D2O and H2O owing to the slight difference in acidity between D2O and H2O. This discovery is a new and facile strategy for the construction of D2O optical sensors. Through this strategy, ratiometric colorimetric D2O sensor of NIM-2F and colorimetric/fluorescent dual-channel D2O sensor of AF were acquired successfully. Both NIM-2F and AF can not only qualitatively distinguish D2O from H2O by the naked eye, but also quantitatively detect the H2O content in D2O.