There is continued interest in the development of anion sensors due to the pivotal roles that anions play in many chemical, biological and medicinal processes. Calixarenes have proven to be versatile scaffolds for the development of anion sensors due to the ease of functionalization at their lower or upper rims with linkers decorated with recognition motifs for anions, such as urea, thiourea and amide moieties. These modified calixarenes form a pre-organized core capable of improving the binding and selectivity of anions. This presentation will describe the synthesis, characterization and anion sensing studies of lanthanide-chelated pyridine functionalized calixarenes. These functionalized calixarenes have been synthesized in two steps and characterized via NMR, UV-Vis and fluorescence spectroscopy. Lifetime measurements and quantum yields of these functionalized calixarenes have also been determined. The binding ability of these functionalized calixarenes for various anions, including NO3- HSO4-, H2PO4- (as their tetrabutylammonium salts) was tested in organic media by monitoring the changes in their UV-Vis and fluorescence spectra as a function of added anions. Finally, the use of these calixarenes as sensors in an array-based format will be discussed.

Functionalized calixarenes: Synthesis, characterization and anion sensing applications

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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