Chemosensory rhodamine-immobilized mesoporous silica material for extracting mercury ion in water with improved sensitivity

Mesoporous silica material, SBA - 15 , is an excellent support for constructing fluorescent surface sensor. In this paper, we reported a three-step surface reaction involved strategy to construct efficient fluorescent surface sensor for mercury ion by clicking rhodamine fluoroionophores onto APES-functionalized SBA - 15 , which is fully characterized by IR spectra , TGA analysis, elemental analysis , nitrogen adsorption experiment and TEM . Our experimental results indicated that such a strategy exhibits an obviously higher loading efficiency within SBA - 15 than a previously reported strategy. The Hg 2+ extracting efficiency for SBAIR was found to be enhanced ( ca . 89%). In addition to the high selectivity , the current chemosensor shows improved sensitivity and can respond to Hg 2+ as low as ppb level (1.0 × 10 −8  M, 2 ppb) in water.