Polyalkoxy substituted phthalocyanines sensitive to phenolic compounds in water

Abstract Chemical sensors are considered a suitable technology for the detection of various chemical species in the gas and liquid phase. For liquid sensing applications there is an ongoing interest on the development of new sensing layers targeting various organic or inorganic compounds including pesticides, hydrocarbons, phenols, or other water contaminants. As sensitive materials phthalocyanines (Pc) have been found to exhibit excellent sensing performance and compounds with highly varying sorption properties and good sensing performance can be produced by chemical modifications applied to the base structure. In this work, new Pcs as sensitive materials for chemical sensors operating in water with specific selectivity and high sensitivity are described. The materials are characterized using the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The influence of the modifications made to the Pc core on the analyte sorption and QCM sensing properties are discussed. Materials with high sensitivities and clear preferences to certain analytes have been obtained, e.g., Pcs with polyalkoxy substituents showed high sorption preferences for compounds like pentachlorophenol and QCM sensitivities as high as 200 Hz/mg/l for PCP were obtained. The results provide new insights for new sensor material design in liquid sensing with the QCM and related sorption based sensor types.