Two Schiff-base fluorescent sensors for selective sensing of aluminum (III): Experimental and computational studies

•The sensors show selectively response toward Al3+.•The sensors exhibit a large fluorescence enhancement in the presence of Al3+.•The detection limits reached at 10−8 M.

Two Schiff-base fluorescent sensors have been synthesized, which both can act as fluorescent probes for Al3+, upon addition of Al3+, they exhibit a large fluorescence enhancement which might be attributed to the formation of 1:1 ligand-Al complexes which inhibit photoinduced electron transfer (PET) progress, and that the proposed binding modes of the sensors and Al3+ are identified by theoretical calculations.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide