New highly luminescent europium(Ⅲ) complex covalently bonded with titania-based host via using a terpyridine carboxylate derivative linker for fluorescence sensing

Herein the novel luminescent europium(Ⅲ) hybrid material (denoted as Eu(tta) 3 cptpy-TiO 2 ) was designed and synthesized. With the coordination interaction between europium(Ⅲ) ions and the organic ligands, the as-synthesized Eu(tta) 3 (H 2 O)(EtOH) complex was covalently grafted to the titania host backbone. The materials were characterized by FT-IR and Raman spectra , 13 C SSNMR, X-ray diffraction, SEM, XPS , thermogravimetric analysis and photoluminescence spectra . The results reveal that Eu(tta) 3 cptpy-TiO 2 possesses the combined superior properties of the complex and the inorganic matrix, which not only realized better thermal stability but also obtained more excellent luminescence performance than that of the complex. Moreover, this material performs reasonably long lifetime of 1.02 ms because of the efficient energy transfer from the ligands or titania host to Eu 3+ ion. Furthermore, the application in detecting organic solvents and metal ions was investigated systematically. Meanwhile, Eu(tta) 3 cptpy-TiO 2 presents superior detection for nitrobenzene molecule and Fe 3+ ion. In addition, the limit of detection (LOD) of Eu(tta) 3 cptpy-TiO 2 for nitrobenzene molecule and Fe 3+ ion can be counted as 6.162 × 10 −5  M and 2.371 × 10 −5  M, respectively. The results demonstrate that Eu(tta) 3 cptpy-TiO 2 bears potential for highly sensitive sensing of nitrobenzene and Fe 3+ ion.