Water-Soluble Chitosan-Europium Hybrid Sensor for Singlet Oxygen Detection.

The ability to effectively monitor singlet oxygen (O) with fluorescence probes in biological systems is severely restricted mainly by the background autofluorescence of these systems. Though the application of lanthanide complexes as O monitors successfully resolves this problem with time-gated luminescence measurements, the insolubility of these complexes in an aqueous medium heavily limits their application in biological systems. Here, we present a water-soluble O sensor based on a chitosan-europium hybrid material.