New highly luminescent europium(III) complex covalently bonded with titania-based host via using a terpyridine carboxylate derivative linker for fluorescence sensing

Abstract Herein the novel luminescent europium(Ⅲ) hybrid material (denoted as Eu(tta)3cptpy-TiO2) was designed and synthesized. With the coordination interaction between europium(Ⅲ) ions and the organic ligands, the as-synthesized Eu(tta)3(H2O)(EtOH) complex was covalently grafted to the titania host backbone. The materials were characterized by FT-IR and Raman spectra, 13C SSNMR, X-ray diffraction, SEM, XPS, thermogravimetric analysis and photoluminescence spectra. The results reveal that Eu(tta)3cptpy-TiO2 possesses the combined superior properties of the complex and the inorganic matrix, which not only realized better thermal stability but also obtained more excellent luminescence performance than that of the complex. Moreover, this material performs reasonably long lifetime of 1.02 ms because of the efficient energy transfer from the ligands or titania host to Eu3+ ion. Furthermore, the application in detecting organic solvents and metal ions was investigated systematically. Meanwhile, Eu(tta)3cptpy-TiO2 presents superior detection for nitrobenzene molecule and Fe3+ ion. In addition, the limit of detection (LOD) of Eu(tta)3cptpy-TiO2 for nitrobenzene molecule and Fe3+ ion can be counted as 6.162 × 10−5 M and 2.371 × 10−5 M, respectively. The results demonstrate that Eu(tta)3cptpy-TiO2 bears potential for highly sensitive sensing of nitrobenzene and Fe3+ ion.