Here, we introduced a novel thiourea-based rhodamine compound as a chromo-fluorogenic indicator of nerve agent Soman and its simulant diethyl chlorophosphate (DCP). The synthesized probe N-(rhodamine B)-lactam-2-(4-cyanophenyl) thiourea (RB-CT), which has a rhodamine core linked by a cyanophenyl thiosemicarbazide group, enabled a rapidly and highly sensitive response to DCP with clear fluorescence and color changes. The detection limit was as low as 2 × 10−6 M. The sensing mechanism showed that opening of the spirolactam ring following the phosphorylation of thiosemicarbazides group formed a seven-membered heterocycle adduct, according to MS analysis and TD-DFT calculations. RB-CT exhibited high detecting selectivity for DCP, among other organophosphorus compounds. Moreover, two test kits were employed and successfully used to detect real nerve agent Soman in liquid and gas phase.
Protection against harmful chemical compounds is a major social concern, especially chemical warfare agents (CWAs) that are easy to synthesize and can cause mass casualties. The metal oxides with large surface area, porous structures, and a large number of active sites have shown outstanding performance for the adsorption and decontamination of CWAs. However, single-component metal oxides show a lower degradation rate for chemical warfare agents. Here, we demonstrate a convenient homogeneous hydrolysis method for the synthesis of mesoporous manganese-based multi-component metal oxides. Our strategy enables Ce or/and Zr to be doped into the δ-MnO2 structure during the forming process, remarkably enlarging the surface area and providing rich active sites for CWA catalysis. The as-synthesized multi-component metal oxides exhibit excellent performance for the CWA degradation. It is surprising to find that the best degree of removal of mustard gas (HD), soman (GD), and the VX nerve agent (VX) is 90.60%, 87.32%, and 100%, respectively, reaction with multi-component samples in 4 h, 2.92-fold increase to HD, 8.28-fold increase to GD, and 1.67-fold increase to VX contrast with undoped δ-MnO2. This work may provide an avenue for developing new generation chemical warfare agent decontamination materials and other catalysts.
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