Dimedone‐decorated conjugated polymer: Tandem knoevenagel‐michael post‐modification synthesis and its application as optical probe for Hg²⁺ and ClO⁻ in high‐water‐fraction mediums

Abstract

High-efficiency, mild-conditioned tandem Knoevenagel-Michael reaction was utilized to post-modify aldehydecontaining, triphenylamine-based precursor conjugated polymer (CP1) to afford dimedone-decorated aimed polymer (CP2). The chemical structure of CP2 was verified by FTIR and 1 H NMR analyses. With the introduction of aqueous Hg 21 , fluorescence of CP2 in THF-water mixture (V THF /V water 5 1/100) (buffered with 5 mM sodium dihydrogen phosphate-disodium hydrogen phosphate (PB), pH 5 7.4) altered significantly, with the emission changed from blue to orange. Besides this, CP2 also displayed specific optical response to ClO 2 in another probing medium (V THF /V water 5 1/100, buffered with 50 mM PBS (with NaCl in PB, pH 5 7.4). The detailed probing process and the plausible detection mechanism of CP2 to Hg 21 and ClO 2 were systematically investigated here.