A novel anthracene functionalized dibenzoxanthene fluorophore for copper (II) sensing

Abstract Dibenzoxanthene derivatives are widely used in metal ion sensing applications. Especially, fluorescent dibenzoxanthene derivatives are potential candidate to sense metal ions in various solvent systems. However, most of the studies are focused on either metal sensing in aqueous solutions, or sensing of the extremely toxic metal ions, such as Pb2+ and Hg2+. In this study, a novel benzyl functionalized dibenzoxanthene derivative and a novel fluorescent anthracene functionalized dibenzoxanthene derivative were synthesized to sense metal ions in polar aprotic solvent systems by using UV–Vis spectroscopy and Fluorescence spectroscopy. As benzyl-dibenzoxanthene was sensitive to multiple metal ions (Pb2+, Co2+, and Cu2+), novel anthracenyl-dibenzoxanthene was only sensitive to Cu2+ with the binding capacity of one anthracenyl-dibenzoxanthene to three Cu2+ ions, thus the copper sensitivity was increased. The binding affinity of dibenzoxanthene derivatives with Cu2+ has been analyzed by 1H NMR and High-resolution XPS.