Carbon dot-decorated porous organic cage as fluorescent sensor for rapid discrimination of nitrophenol isomers and chiral alcohols

Abstract Isomers discrimination plays a vital role in modern chemistry, and development of efficient and rapid method to achieve this aim has attracted a great deal of interest. In this work, a novel carbon dot-decorated chiral porous organic cage hybrid nanocomposite (CD@RCC3) was prepared and used to fabricate fluorescent sensor. The resultant CD@RCC3 was characterized by using a range of techniques, finding that CD@RCC3 possesses strong and stable fluorescent property in common organic solvents, especially it exhibits chiral property. The potential application of CD@RCC3 in fluorescence sensing was demonstrated by isomers discrimination. The designed sensor was successfully used to rapid discriminate nitrophenol isomers. Meanwhile, it exhibited differentiation ability towards phenylalaninol and phenylethanol enantiomers. Our work enriches the type of synthetic materials for fluorescence sensing, and provides a simple method for distinguishing structural isomers and chiral isomers.