Instant detection of environment pollutants (Hg2+/Cu2+) in water and food samples using pyrene-based chemosensor, and its bio imaging applications

Heavy metal pollution of water bodies is an immense threat to human health and aquatic ecosystem and developing on-site sensors to screen heavy metal ions are of great research interest. This work presents a pyrene-based Schiff base (PYSC), as a dual chemosensing probe for heavy metal sensing. The PYSC probe exhibits remarkable selectivity towards Hg²⁺ and Cu²⁺ ions in absorption and fluorescent spectroscopic techniques in a semi-aqueous medium and discern Hg²⁺ and Cu²⁺ ions in presence of high concentrations of other interfering species such as Pb²⁺, Cd²⁺, Zn²⁺, Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Mn²⁺, Fe²⁺, Cr³⁺, Ag⁺, etc., Sensing at PYSC follows aggregation-induced complexation that deliver red shift in fluorescence. The PYSC chemosensor shows a good linear relationship towards Hg²⁺/Cu²⁺ detection with low detection limits of 3 and 15 nM for Cu²⁺ and Hg²⁺ ions, respectively. The photonic and analytical excellency of PYSC is utilized for intra-cellular imaging of Hg²⁺/Cu²⁺ ions, and rapid colorimetric detection of Hg²⁺/Cu²⁺ ions in water and food samples with adequate reliability. Thus, the PYSC chemosensor can be an alternative test tool for rapid determination of Hg²⁺/Cu²⁺ ions in food and environmental water samples.