New Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes-Based Fluorescent Ionic Liquids: Synthesis, Self-Assembly and Application in Sensors for Detecting Nitroaromatic Explosives

Abstract

In this paper, two different models of hybrid ionic liquids (ILs) based on polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSSs) have been prepared. Additionally, these ILs based on POSSs (ILs-POSSs) exhibited excellent thermal stabilities and low glass transition temperatures. 1H, 13C, and 29Si nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to confirm the structures of the IL-POSSs. Furthermore, the spherical vesicle structures of two IL-POSSs were observed and were caused by self-assembly behaviors. In addition, we found it very meaningful that these two ILs showed lower detection limits of 2.57 × 10−6 and 3.98 × 10−6 mol/L for detecting picric acid (PA). Moreover, the experimental data revealed that the products have high sensitivity for detecting a series of nitroaromatic compounds—including 4-nitrophenol, 2,4-dinitrophenol, and PA—and relatively comprehensive explosive detection in all of the tests of IL-POSSs with nitroaromatic compounds thus far. Additionally, the data indicate that these two new ILs have great potential for the detection of explosives. Therefore, our work may provide new materials including ILs as fluorescent sensors in detecting nitroaromatic explosives.

Fluorescent Amorphous Distyrylnaphthalene-Based Polymers: Synthesis, Characterization and Thin-Film Nanomolar Sensing of Nitroaromatics in Water

“…Nevertheless, it has been difficult to establish general structure-property relationships for the quenching responses of NACs that could be used to improve the performance and selectivity of the materials by rational design. Some of the difficulties arise from the occurrence of different or competing quenching mechanisms other than photoinduced electron transfer (ET) [3], such as resonance energy transfer (RET) [3,16] or inner filter effects (IFE) [25,26,27].…”

A Selenone-Functionalized Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane for Selective Detection and Adsorption of Hg2+ ions in Aqueous Solutions

“…Compared to conventional organic molecules and polymers, POSS and their derivatives (typically T 8 , R 8 Si 8 O 12 ) possess many unique characteristics, such as rigid, high symmetric, well-defined, and ideal inorganic-organic hybrid structures, nanoscopic size (1-3 nm) and high functionality, etc, and thus having intriguing advantages, such as high thermal stability, mechanical properties (e.g., strength, modulus, rigidity), and improved quantum yields [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. By virtue of these merits, they have been widely applied in many fields, including drug delivery [9], wastewater treatment [10,11], chemical sensors [12][13][14][15][16], energy transfer [17], bioimaging [18], chromatography [19], Polymers 2019, 11,2084 2 of 16 polymer electrolytes [20], catalysis [21][22][23], and membranes [24], etc. To realize these applications, it is crucial to incorporate various functionality into the POSS derivatives and/or materials.…”

“…Hong et al attached bis(diphenylphosphino)amine ligand to POSS, affording a solubility-enhancing material for catalytic ethylene trimerization and tetramerization [23]. By combining imidazolium with POSS units, the POSS-based ionic liquids can be utilized to detect nitroaromatic explosives [15] and as solid polymer electrolytes [20]. Although many POSS-based functional materials are available, the variety is still small compared to the vast carbon-based functional materials so it is still highly desirable to develop more POSS-based materials with novel structures and unique properties.…”

Synthesis and characterization of tetrathiol-substituted double-decker or ladder silsesquioxane nano-cores

“…49 The outstanding properties of the resulting materials find their origin in the self-organisation of the molecular fragments including the inorganic T 8 -head and the organic tails. Along these lines, octathiol-T 8 -POSSs occupy a key place and were functionalized with hydrophilic [50][51][52][53] or hydrophobic fragments [54][55][56][57][58][59] to reach materials employed for sensing, in photocurable systems. or for preparing hybrid microcapsules.…”