A fluorescein modified fluorescence sensor for simultaneous discrimination and detection of Fe3+ and nitrofurazone

Fe 3+ and nitrofurazone (NFZ) can raise a risk for environment and human health due to accumulation in water. Hence, a post-synthetic modification strategy was employed to develop a visualization sensor for detecting Fe 3+ and NFZ. In this study, we selected a Zinc-based metal organic framework in combination with fluorescein to develop a fluorescent dyes-encapsulated sensor (Flu@Zn-MOF). The sensing experimental indicated that the Flu@Zn-MOF demonstrated excellent recognition performance for Fe 3+ and NFZ. The detection limits (LODs) of Fe 3+ and NFZ are 1.27 and 0.89 μM, respectively. Furthermore, the color of Flu@Zn-MOF turn from yellow-green to blue in the presence of NFZ. The proposed sensor can accurately identify Fe 3+ and three nitrofuran analogs (NFZ, NFT and FTD) by principal component analysis (PCA). In addition, satisfactory recovery rates and low standard deviation for detection of Fe 3+ and NFZ in real water samples confirms the practicability of Flu@Zn-MOF. Then, a sensing system was created that leverages smartphone technology for the quantitative and real-time monitoring of NFZ. Therefore, this work presents a new strategy for designing a novel sensing method for on-site recognition of nitrofurans pollutants in water.