Iridium solvent complex as a new sensitive probe to detect benzimidazole pesticides based on photoluminescent signals "switch-on" via coordination mechanism.

An iridium solvent complex (abbreviated as Ir-probe) has been synthesized and reported as a new photoluminescent "switch-on" probe to detect benzimidazole pesticides via coordination mechanism in this work. This new probe could successfully distinguish benzimidazole pesticides from other kinds of common pesticides widely used in agriculture activities. Thiabendazole (TBZ) and carbendazim (CBZ) as the representative benzimidazole pesticides, this probe exhibited good analytical performance with the linear ranges of 0.05 μM to 20 μM for TBZ and 3 μM to 40 μM for CBZ, and the corresponding limit of detection (LOD, 3σ/S) is 0.03 μM and 0.5 μM for analyzing TBZ and CBZ, respectively. In addition, the proposed method in this work also has good recoveries in analyzing TBZ and CBZ residues in the real samples.