A novel ratiometric cationic Iridium(III) complex phosphorescent probe for Hydrogen Peroxide

Abstract

A novel cationic iridium(III) complex phosphorescent probe (Ir-BE) containing aromatic boronate ester moiety as recognition unit was designed and synthesized. The probe exhibits ratiometric emission variations (I490/I550) with the color change from yellow to green only toward H2O2 with a broad pH range of 4-13. Different from other aromatic boronate-based probes, Ir-BE possesses larger Stokes shift (320 nm) and exhibits good linear correlation (R2 = 0.998) between the emission ratio (I490/I550) and the H2O2 concentration in a range of 0-300 μM. The detection limit was as low as 0.21 μM. Furthermore, the real water sample studied further proved Ir-BE has excellent selectivity for the quantitative detection of H202.