Highly selective antenna effect in polystyrene membrane immobilized 2-pyridone sensitizer: Novel spectrofluorimetric method for assessment of nano scale terbium (III)

•Antenna-sensitized PL has been applied for selective detection of Tb3+ rather than other Lns.•The proposed sensor is a polystyrene film immobilized the antenna ligand “2-pyridone”.•The method successfully validates the concept “from antenna to assay”.•The method is facile, highly selective, sensitive, stable, reproducible, fast and validated.

At room temperature, the contact of Tb3+ ions dissolved in bidistilled water with a polystyrene film incorporating 2-pyridone (PS-Pyr) exhibits terbium-sensitized photoluminescence (PL) when excited at 295 nm. The Tb3+-sensitized emission is attributed to a complex formation as well as a highly efficient and selective energy transfer from 2-pyridone to Tb3+ ions. This has been utilized as the basis for a selective spectrofluorimetric detection of Tb3+. The association constant and the lifetime of the formed complex were determined; also, the sensing mechanism of the optosensor was proposed. The linear response range covers a concentration range of Tb3+ from 5.0 × 10−9 to 1.0 × 10−6 mol L−1. The LOD and LOQ were 2.9 × 10−9 and 9.7 × 10−9 mol L−1, respectively. The sensitizer exhibits a unique and a highly selective energy transfer towards Tb3+ ions over a large number of interfering ions. Moreover, the proposed optosensor was easy to prepare, has a relatively fast response time ∼30 s and high stability for at least 42 days. The optosensor has been applied to the determination of terbium ion in synthetic samples with high sensitivity, good reproducibility and accuracy.

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