Development of a Water‐Dispersible SBA‐15‐Benzothiazole‐Derived Fluorescence Nanosensor by Physisorption and Its Use in Organic‐Solvent‐Free Detection of Perborate and Hydrazine

We have synthesized a water dispersible SBA‐15 based sensing material (nanosensor 1 ) for the detection of perborate ions and hydrazine in water. The nanosensor was prepared by simple physisorption of chemosensing unit 2‐(benzo[ d ]thiazol‐2‐yl)phenyl acetate ( 2 ) onto PEG‐stabilized SBA‐15. The probe molecule undergoes spontaneous cleavage of acetate group in the presence of both perborate ions and hydrazine to produce corresponding phenol ( 3 ), which results in greenish blue fluorescence by excited state intra‐molecular proton transfer (ESIPT) mechanism. The limit of detection (LOD) for both analytes was observed in ppb level; 49.9 ppb for perborate ions and 8.0 ppb for hydrazine. Simple synthesis, effortless modification, high water dispersibility make this nanosensor very efficient for perborate ions and hydrazine. Finally, this is a demonstration of the physisorption strategy in building useful sensing materials which can be applied to any analyte based on the choice of a suitable chemosenors.