Carbon dot-decorated porous organic cage as fluorescent sensor for rapid discrimination of nitrophenol isomers and chiral alcohols

Isomers discrimination plays a vital role in modern chemistry , and development of efficient and rapid method to achieve this aim has attracted a great deal of interest. In this work, a novel carbon dot-decorated chiral porous organic cage hybrid nanocomposite (CD@RCC3) was prepared and used to fabricate fluorescent sensor. The resultant CD@RCC3 was characterized by using a range of techniques, finding that CD@RCC3 possesses strong and stable fluorescent property in common organic solvents , especially it exhibits chiral property. The potential application of CD@RCC3 in fluorescence sensing was demonstrated by isomers discrimination. The designed sensor was successfully used to rapid discriminate nitrophenol isomers. Meanwhile, it exhibited differentiation ability towards phenylalaninol and phenylethanol enantiomers . Our work enriches the type of synthetic materials for fluorescence sensing , and provides a simple method for distinguishing structural isomers and chiral isomers.