Europium-macrocycle based lab-on-a-molecule fluorescent probe and its multianalyte detection of phosphate and aluminum ions

Despite the tremendous advances that have been made in selective detection of a wide range of inorganic anions and cations, a single fluorescent probe possessing a high discrimination ability for these ions and their analogues is still very rare. Herein we propose a mononuclear europium-macrocycle complex Eu-2l which employs the imine bond interaction sites and embeds europium ion into a Schiff-base macrocyclic cavity interior to construct the dual-emission matrix for the lab-on-a-molecule fluorescent probe. Eu-2l not only allows the conventional spectral analysis for significant intensity changes of emission bands but also enables the statistical analysis for different levels of fluorescence sensing signals. As a result, this novel fluorescent platform Eu-2l shows the great real-time, selective, sensitive and quantitative detection ability for PO43- or Al3+ among common inorganic ions. Furthermore, when sensing signals of anions and cations on different fluorescence channels are systematically evaluated by principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) methods, Eu-2l allows the high-through discrimination of not only 18 anions and 12 cations but also several analogues and their proportional mixtures, even in real environmental water sample. This work enriches the PO43- and Al3+ chemosensors, highlights huge benefits of the combination multi-emission fluorescent matrix and statistical analysis methods and thus provides a vital reference to construct the lab-on-a-molecule probe by a single chemical entity for multianalyte detection and discrimination in various fields. [Display omitted] •Mononuclear Eu-macrocycle Eu-2l is fabricated into a lab-on-a-molecule fluorescence probe for multianalyte detection.•Spectral analyses verify fast, selective, and sensitive detection ability of Eu-2l for PO43- and Al3+.•Statistical analyses make Eu-2l efficiently discriminate 18 anions and 12 cations, even several analogues and mixtures.