A rhodamine-based fluorescent enhancement chemosensor for the detection of Cr3+ in aqueous media

A rhodamine-based chemosensors (RF) was designed, and their sensing behavior toward metal ions was investigated by fluorescence spectroscopies. RF showed high selective recognition toward Cr3+ over other examined metal ions in aqueous media. With the optimum condition described, the response was linearly proportional to the concentration of Cr3+ in the range 0–10 μM with a detection limit of 0.023 μM. The proposed method was also applied to intracellular Cr3+ imaging in living cells and determination Cr3+ in tap water, river water.

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► This work designed and synthesized a new fluorescent probe (RF).
► The probe showed high selectivity for Cr3+ in Tris–HCl (pH = 7.2) aqueous buffer solution.
► Possible response mechanism of RF and Cr3+ has preliminary studied as well.
► The probe was successful applied to intracellular Cr3+ imaging in living cells.
► The proposed method was also applied to determination Cr3+ in water samples.