A conjugated fluorescent polymer sensor with amidoxime and polyfluorene entities for effective detection of uranyl ion in real samples.

It is an important challenge to develop a chemosensor for trace uranyl ion in an aqueousmediumfor sustainable development of nuclear energy and environmental conservation. A conjugated fluorescent polymer sensor P2 based on amidoxime groups and polyfluorene, which showed good hydrophilous resulting adequate contact with uranyl ions and selectivity and sensitivity even in the presence of other metal ions in DMA/H2O (v/v = 20:80, pH= 6.0) solution, for uranyl ion was designed and prepared in this work. And it possesses good thermal stability and a larger Stokes shift (108 nm). Importantly, the fluorescence quenching occurredwhen P2 combining uranium. It had a good linear relationship with UO22+ concentration in the range of 10 to 200 nM with a fairly low LOD 7.4 x 10(-9) M. Interaction properties between the sensor P2 and UO22+ and the fluorescent mechanism were investigated by density functional theory (DFT). More importantly, the sensor can be successfully used for the detection of uranyl ion in environmental solutions. This work suggests that conjugated fluorescent polymer with amidoxime groups will be a prospective sensor of uranyl ion in the environmental sample. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.