A FRET Based Composite Sensing Material Based on UCNPs and Rhodamine Derivative for Highly Sensitive and Selective Detection of Fe 3+

The existence of excessive concentration of iron ion (Fe 3+ ) in water will do harm to the environment and biology. Presently, sensitive and selective determination of Fe 3+ directly in real environment samples is still a challenging job because of the high complexity of the sample matrix. In this work, we reported a new sensor system for Fe 3+ based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) from upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) to Rhodamine derivative probe (RhB). The NaYF 4 : Yb, Er@SiO 2 @P(NIPAM-co-RhB) nanocomposites was constructed, in which PNIPAm was used as the probe carrier. The nanocomposites can not only be excited by infrared light to avoid the interference of background light in the Fe 3+ detection process, but also enhance the detection signal output through temperature control. Under the optimum conditions, the RSD (Relative standard deviation) of actual sample measurements ranges was from 1.95% to 4.96%, with the recovery rate from 97.4% to 103.3%, which showed high reliability for Fe 3+ detection. This work could be extended to sensing other target ions or molecules and may promote the widespread use of FRET technique.