Bin Qian - ALUMNUS
ALUMNUS - Current LinkedIn profile including contact details.
Copper contamination in soil and water is a major concern due to its direct impact on human health when present in excessive/inadequate amounts[1,2] and form complexes with ligand, such as protein, molecules, enzymes, which possess electron rich centres to donate electrons, such as N, O, P, and S. Thus, the development of rapid and reliable sensing methods that are selective and sensitive to metals ions of interest, and that can be utilized in aqueous media is essential in allowing for rapid and readily available management of both nutrient- and contaminant-levels. By inviting molecular design and materials engineering, a series of fluorescent coumarin derivatives were designed, synthesized, and evaluated for their Cu2+ sensing performance in aqueous media to gain fundamental understanding of the structural requirements towards such molecular probes (Figure 1) using NMR, IR and MS, single crystal X-ray study of the probes and their Cu2+ complexes resulted in the insight understanding of the essential heteroatom ratio and configuration, and the optimum relative distances among the molecular moieties, rigidity of the structure and electron density with selective sensing[1].
Figure 1: Single-crystal structure of one of the coumarin-Cu²⁺ complexes tested here
Figure 2. Schematic illustration of design of fluorescent coumarin derivatives for Cu²⁺ sensing
Meanwhile, aimed at the improvement of sensitivity and water solubility of previously developed Cu²⁺ - selective coumarin probes, SiO2-coumarin nanohybrid was formulated via electrostatic attraction with negatively charged SiO2 nanoparticles (SiO2 NPs) and the selected coumarin in aqueous media at certain pH value. This material possessed the identical Cu2+ selectivity of the coumarin with lowered limit of detection and an extended linear detection range. The coumarin nanohybrids were also applied to determine Cu2+ concentration in aqueous soil extracts with >94% recovery rates when compared to standard soil analysis method - inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).
This project was conducted in conjunction with CSIRO.
References
[1] Clemens, S.; Ma, J. F., Annual review of plant biology 2016, 67, 489-512.
[2] Giripunje, M. D.; Fulke, A. B.; Meshram, P. U. Clean-Soil, Air, Water 2015, 43 (9), 1350-1354.
[3] Qian, B.; Váradi, L.; Trinchi, A.; Reichman, S.; Bao, L.; Lan, M.; Wei, G.; Cole, I. S.. Molecules 2019, 24 (19), 3569.
Nanostructures
Functional strontium phosphate-coated magnesium alloys for orthopaedic use
