Lithium sensors based on photophysical changes of 1-aza-12-crown-4 naphthalene derivatives synthesized Buchwald-Hartwig amination.

Lithium detection is of great significance in many applications. Lithium-sensing compounds with high selectivity are scarce and, if any, complicated to synthesize. We herein report a novel yet simple compound that can detect lithium ions in an organic solvent through changes in absorbance and fluorescence.

Site-Selective Protein Immobilization on Polymeric Supports through N-Terminal Imidazolidinone Formation.

Protein immobilization techniques on polymeric supports have enabled many applications in biotechnology and materials science. Attaching the proteins with controlled orientations has inherent advantages, but approaches for doing this have been largely limited to cysteine or noncanonical amino acid targeting. Herein, we report a method to attach the N-terminal positions of native proteins to polymer resins site-specifically through the use of 2-pyridinecarboxyaldehyde (2PCA) derivatives.

Distinct Interfacial Fluorescence in Oil-in-Water Emulsions via Exciton Migration of Conjugated Polymers.

Commercial dyes are extensively utilized to stain specific phases for the visualization applications in emulsions and bioimaging. In general, dyes emit only one specific fluorescence signal and thus, in order to stain various phases and/or interfaces, one needs to incorporate multiple dyes and carefully consider their compatibility to avoid undesirable interactions with each other and with the components in the system. Herein, surfactant-type, perylene-endcapped fluorescent conjugated polymers that exhibit two different emissions are reported, which are cyan in water and red at oil-water interfaces.

Interfacial Pressure/Area Sensing: Dual-Fluorescence of Amphiphilic Conjugated Polymers at Water Interfaces.

Exciton migration to emissive defects in π-conjugated polymers is a robust signal amplification strategy for optoelectronic sensors. Herein we report end-capped conjugated polymers that show two distinct emissions as a function of interpolymer distances at the air-water and hydrocarbon-water interfaces. Amphiphilic poly(phenylene ethynylene)s (PPEs) end-capped with perylene monoimides display two distinct emission colors (cyan from PPE and red from perylene), the relative intensity of which depends on the surface pressure applied on the Langmuir monolayers.

Highly Emissive Excimers by 2D Compression of Conjugated Polymers.

Interactions between π-conjugated polymers are known to create ground-state aggregates, excimers, and exciplexes. With few exceptions, these species exhibit decreased fluorescence quantum yields relative to the isolated polymers in liquid or solid solutions. Herein, we report a method to assemble emissive conjugated polymer excimers and demonstrate their applicability in the detection of selected solvent vapors.

Functionalized Poly(3-hexylthiophene)s via Lithium-Bromine Exchange.

Poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) is one of the most extensively investigated conjugated polymers and has been employed as the active material in many devices including field-effect transistors, organic photovoltaics and sensors. As a result, methods to further tune the properties of P3HT are desirable for specific applications. Herein, we report a facile postpolymerization modification strategy to functionalize the 4-position of commercially available P3HT in two simple steps-bromination of the 4-position of P3HT (Br-P3HT) followed by lithium-bromine exchange and quenching with an electrophile.

A new hematite photoanode doping strategy for solar water splitting: oxygen vacancy generation.

The enhancement of the electrical conductivity by doping is important in hematite (α-Fe(2)O(3)) photoanodes for efficient solar water oxidation. However, in spite of many successful demonstrations using extrinsic dopants, such as Sn, Ti, and Si, the achieved photocurrent is still lower than the practical requirement. There is still lack of our understanding of how intrinsic oxygen defects can change the photocurrent and interact with the extrinsic dopants.