Pore‐Engineered Hydrogen‐Bonded Supramolecular Fluorosensor for Ultrasensitive Determination of Copper Ions
Haiting Chen, Haoquan Huang, Huiying Xu, Tong Wu, Yanbin Xu, Xiaomin Ma, Wei Yi, Guosheng Chen, Siming Huang, Gangfeng Ouyang
Abstract
Abstract The selective quantification of copper ions (Cu 2+ ) in biosamples holds great importance for disease diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis since the Cu 2+ level is closely associated with the physiological state of the human body. While it remains a long‐term challenge due to the extremely low level of free Cu 2+ and the potential interference by the complex matrices. Here, a pore‐engineered hydrogen‐bonded organic framework (HOF) fluorosensor is constructed enabling the ultrasensitive and highly selective detection of free Cu 2+ . Attributing to atomically precise functionalization of active amino “arm” within the HOF pores and the periodic π‐conjugated skeleton, this porous HOF fluorosensor affords high affinity toward Cu 2+ through double copper–nitrogen (Cu─N) coordination interactions, resulting in specific fluorescence quenching of the HOF as compared with a series of substances ranging from other metal ions, metabolites, amino acids to proteins. Such superior fluorescence quenching effect endows the Cu 2+ quantification by this new HOF sensor with a wide linearity of 50–20 000 n m , a low detection limit of 10 n m , and good recoveries (89.5%–115%) in human serum matrices, outperforming most of the reported approaches. This work highlights the practicability of hydrogen‐bonded supramolecular engineering for designing facile and ultrasensitive biosensors for clinical free Cu 2+ determination.